Test and Evaluation Engineer at Helsing — Washington, DC

## Who we are

Helsing develops artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities to protect and defend democracies. We are growing our US operations, cultivating an ambitious and committed team of mission-driven professionals to apply their skills to solve challenging problems.

## The role

In this role, you will be part of our hardware and platform integration team, focusing on the rigorous testing, validation, and evaluation of our Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems and AI-enabled flight capabilities. Your mission will span the complete development and deployment cycle: from laboratory-based software-in-the-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations to demanding field trials under real-world, degraded, and adversarial conditions.

You will be an engineer who is not afraid to troubleshoot systems in the dirt, under rain, or in electromagnetically challenging environments, ensuring our platforms perform with extreme reliability and absolute safety when it matters most.

## The day-to-day

• Design, build, and scale rigorous test and evaluation (T&E) pipelines for our autonomous UAV fleet, encompassing physical hardware, flight controllers, communication and sensor payloads, and AI edge-perception models.
• Own planning and execution of Modeling and Simulation (M&S), Software-in-the-Loop (SIL), and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) analysis to stress-test subsystem integrations and real-time software prior to physical flight.
• Organize, coordinate, and execute flight test campaigns. Work closely with flight operators, field engineers, and software teams to validate autonomous behaviors, sensor synchronization, and edge-AI model performance under challenging real-world conditions.
• Deep-dive into flight data logs, telemetry, and sensor streams to hunt down root causes of failures, sensor misalignment, or unexpected edge-case behaviors. Coordinate with M&S, SIL, and HIL engineers to perform post-test reconstruction and inform model updates and verification.
• Collaborate directly with our software, ML research, and hardware design teams. You won't just report bugs; you'll partner directly to translate test findings into robust, hardened engineering solutions.
• Author comprehensive test plans, safety cases, and qualification reports to satisfy safety benchmarks as well as military certification standards. Partner with System Engineers to produce artifacts necessary for Verification and Validation (V&V) of system performance.

## You should apply if you

• Hold a BSc, MSc, or PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field.
• Have 7+ years of experience in testing, validation, and evaluation of complex autonomous systems, ideally UAVs, robotics, or aerospace platforms for US military customers.
• Are highly proficient in Python, C++, or MATLAB for data analysis, log parsing, and automating validation setups.
• Understand sensor integration, calibration, and synchronization (e.g., LiDAR, EO/IR cameras, IMUs, GNSS) and how they perform under vibration and thermal stress on an airframe.
• Are perfectly comfortable navigating highly complex, multidisciplinary systems independently, troubleshooting them under pressure, and defining clear validation roadmaps.
• Have experience on mature aircraft or munition development program, including operational testing.
• Are familiar with the common military testing standards and designing tests for them.  Examples include, MIL-STD 81H, MIL-STD 882E, MIL-STD 1316, etc...