System Test Engineer
About The Position
Luna Innovations Incorporated is seeking a System Test Engineer to test software and instruments together before they reach customers. The role owns testing from integration through release, collaborates with developers and testers across the product line, and contributes to test automation, including AI-assisted tools. The position is based onsite at Luna’s Blacksburg, Virginia office, with hands-on work using instruments and test stations. The engineer will join a collaborative team supporting customer-facing products and an internal diagnostic tool. The team plans work and tracks issues using Kanban-style GitHub Project boards, meets weekly to discuss technical problems and project status, and works together to solve complex problems. Success in the first year includes consistent QA coverage across customer-facing products, timely and reliable feedback on builds and fixes, an automated regression suite for core workflows, and releases delivered on schedule with confidence in their quality. The level will be determined based on education and experience, with Engineer II and Senior Engineer levels targeted.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, physics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- At least 3 years of experience testing software, ideally software that controls hardware or instruments. Engineer II candidates typically have 3 to 5 years of experience; Senior candidates typically have 5 or more.
- Experience writing test plans and test cases.
- Experience with test automation, including automated UI testing.
- Scripting skills in Python or a similar language.
- Comfort working in both Windows and Linux.
- Clear written communication skills, including bug reports, test reports, and documentation.
Nice To Haves
- Hands-on experience using AI tools to improve testing, such as generating test cases, writing automation, or analyzing test results.
- Experience with test instruments and lab equipment.
- Experience with CI tools such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
- Experience with performance profiling and long-duration stability testing.
Responsibilities
- Test interfaces between applications, instrument firmware, and hardware drivers.
- Write test plans and test cases, set up test stations with real instruments and optics, and verify measurements end to end.
- Perform smoke testing on new builds and verify bug fixes while checking for regressions in related features.
- Build and maintain an automated regression suite, including UI tests, and run it on each release candidate.
- Track acquisition rates, latency, resource use, and long-duration stability across releases.
- Conduct final release testing, document tests and results in release test reports, and provide a go/no-go recommendation.
- Use AI tools to generate and maintain test cases, accelerate automation, analyze results, and identify defect patterns.
- Coordinate testing priorities across multiple products and releases.
- Track and triage reported issues, emphasizing customer-reported defects.
- Log defects in GitHub with clear reproduction steps and help developers isolate root causes.
- Work with developers and customer support to reproduce and resolve customer issues.
- Manage build machines and test environments, including test stations, instruments, and test data.
- Contribute to release notes and documentation of known issues.
- Support internal tools and production as needed.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
