Software Engineer, Test & Automation

About this role

ABOUT COWBOY SPACE CORP

Mission
Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity’s most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth.

Background
Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport.
Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases.
Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others.
This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation ’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

The Role

We are looking for a Software Engineer, Test & Automation to build and own the software, tooling, and infrastructure used to verify our spacecraft systems throughout the development lifecycle. This includes software-in-the-loop (SIL), hardware-in-the-loop (HITL), environmental and radiation testing, hardware qualification, integration campaigns, and field tests.

Today, much of this work is distributed among engineers who carry test infrastructure alongside their primary responsibilities. This role will establish testing and automation as a dedicated, reusable capability that every flight program can rely on. You will develop common frameworks that support multiple concurrent programs, automate complex test operations, and make it easy for flight software, avionics, hardware, and systems engineers to create trustworthy tests.

This is a software-focused role with significant hands-on interaction with spacecraft hardware, lab equipment, test facilities, and field operations.

Responsibilities

- Design, develop, and maintain reusable software frameworks for automated spacecraft testing across SIL, HITL, environmental, radiation, integration, and field-test environments

- Own the software and automation for HITL infrastructure that exercises real flight software against flight, engineering, or emulated spacecraft hardware

- Build SIL environments that support rapid development, regression testing, fault injection, and validation without requiring physical hardware

- Automate environmental and qualification testing, including thermal-vacuum, vibration, shock, electromagnetic compatibility, and other test campaigns

- Build scheduling, resource management, and reporting systems that make shared test infrastructure repeatable, self-service, and usable across multiple concurrent programs

- Integrate automated tests into continuous integration workflows and provide clear, actionable results to engineering teams

- Stand up, configure, and maintain test racks and supporting lab equipment, including power, data, instrumentation, and safety interfaces

- Develop software interfaces for controlling and collecting data from power supplies, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, data-acquisition systems, environmental chambers, and other test equipment

- Partner with engineering teams to define test coverage, prioritize gaps, and validate hardware and software releases before integration and flight

- Investigate failures and anomalies, distinguish test-infrastructure issues from genuine hardware or software defects, and drive root-cause analysis to closure

- Manage configuration, calibration, versioning, data provenance, and traceability so test environments and results are reproducible and trustworthy

- Document the test platform, develop operating procedures, and champion its adoption across the company

Basic Qualifications

- 3+ years of experience, or equivalent practical experience, in test automation, embedded software, hardware/software integration, validation infrastructure, or a related discipline

- Strong software development skills in Python, C/C++, or Rust

- Experience designing maintainable software tools, libraries, services, or frameworks used by other engineers

- Hands-on experience testing software against physical hardware and integrating software with lab or test equipment

- Experience with common embedded communication interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, and Ethernet

- Ability to debug complex issues that cross software, hardware, instrumentation, and test-environment boundaries

- Demonstrated focus on reusability, reliability, observability, and maintainability rather than one-off test solutions

- Ability and willingness to support hands-on testing in laboratory, test-facility, and field…