Lead Test Engineer

Odin Dynamics • Los Angeles, CA

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About The Position

Odin Dynamics, founded in 2025, is a defense technology company focused on building autonomous underwater vehicles for undersea warfare. The company is seeking a Lead Test Engineer to establish and lead the test function. This role involves defining verification, validation, and qualification processes for autonomous underwater vehicles, from subsystem testing to environmental and in-water operations. The position requires both technical leadership in designing test infrastructure and hands-on execution, as well as organizational building through hiring and leading a growing test team. This is an opportunity to build a test organization from its inception.

Requirements

• B.S. or M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in test engineering, systems integration, or verification and validation for complex hardware-software systems.
• Demonstrated experience planning and executing integration and test campaigns for vehicles, robots, or other complex electromechanical systems.
• Hands-on experience with environmental testing (pressure, thermal cycling, vibration, or similar qualification regimes).
• Field test experience operating hardware outside of a lab and running productive test events in an operational environment.
• Strong instrumentation and data acquisition skills.
• Experience building or significantly improving test processes, infrastructure, or teams.
• Ability to work fluidly across mechanical, electrical, and software disciplines.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• U.S. Citizenship and ability to obtain a security clearance.

Nice To Haves

• Experience testing underwater vehicles, marine systems, or subsea equipment.
• Background in defense or aerospace test and evaluation programs.
• Familiarity with test automation frameworks and scripting for hardware-in-the-loop or automated regression testing.
• Experience with formal verification and validation methodologies for safety-critical or mission-critical systems.
• Exposure to customer acceptance testing or government test and evaluation processes.
• Active security clearance (Secret or above).

Responsibilities

• Define and build the test and integration function, including processes, infrastructure, tooling, and team.
• Plan and execute vehicle-level integration and test campaigns, integrating mechanical, electrical, firmware, and software subsystems.
• Design and lead environmental qualification testing (pressure, thermal, vibration, shock).
• Plan and conduct in-water test events, coordinating logistics, safety, instrumentation, and data collection.
• Develop and maintain software and systems verification approaches for autonomy, navigation, and control systems.
• Build test automation and data infrastructure, including instrumentation rigs, automated test sequences, data pipelines, and reporting tools.
• Author and maintain test plans, procedures, reports, and anomaly documentation.
• Serve as the engineering voice for system readiness.
• Hire, mentor, and lead test engineers and technicians as the team scales.

Benefits

• Solving challenging engineering problems in demanding environments.
• Directly shaping the future of undersea warfare.
• Opportunity to work with real autonomy and hardware with national impact.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior