System Test Engineer

About Luna

Luna Innovations Incorporated (Luna) is a global leader in fiber optic test and measurement and distributed sensing, trusted by aerospace manufacturers, defense contractors, research institutions, and commercial operators worldwide. We are a team of innovators who engineer, manufacture, and relentlessly pursue quality, driven by a shared commitment to exceeding our customers’ expectations.

We are seeking a System Test Engineer to join our team. The level of the role will be determined based on education and experience; however, we are targeting a System Test Engineer II or Senior System Test Engineer.

Position Overview

This hands-on role makes sure our software and instruments work correctly together before they reach customers. You’ll own testing from integration through release, work closely with our developers and testers across the product line, and help lead our investment in test automation, including AI-assisted tools. The role is based onsite at our Blacksburg, VA office, where you’ll work hands-on with our instruments and test stations.

You’ll join a collaborative team that supports customer-facing products and an internal diagnostic tool. We plan work and track issues on Kanban-style GitHub Project boards, meet weekly to talk through technical problems and project status, and solve hard problems together.

In the first year, success will include consistent QA coverage across all customer-facing products, fast and reliable test feedback on every build and fix, an automated regression suite covering core workflows, and releases that ship on schedule with confidence in their quality.

Key Responsibilities

Testing Activities

• Integration testing: test the interfaces between the application, instrument firmware, and hardware drivers.
• System testing: write test plans and test cases, set up test stations with real instruments and optics, and verify measurements end to end.
• Smoke testing and bug-fix verification: check each new build for stability, and confirm fixes without breaking related features.
• Regression testing: build and maintain an automated regression suite, including UI tests, and run it on every release candidate.
• Performance testing: track acquisition rates, latency, resource use, and long-duration stability from release to release.
• Release validation: run final release testing, document the tests run and their results in a release test report, and give a clear go/no-go recommendation.

Quality Operations & Support

• Use AI tools to work smarter: generate and maintain test cases, speed up automation, analyze results, and find patterns in defects.
• Coordinate testing priorities across multiple products and releases.
• Track and triage reported issues, with emphasis on defects reported by customers.
• 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.

Required Qualifications

• 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 bring 3 to 5 years, and Senior candidates 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.
• Comfortable on both Windows and Linux.
• Clear written communication, including bug reports, test reports, and documentation.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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.

Luna Innovations Incorporated is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Luna provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age, disability, gender identity, genetic information, or veteran status. Equal employment opportunity applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leave of absence, compensation, and training. Luna expressly prohibits any form of unlawful employee harassment or discrimination.