Development & Test Infrastructure Engineer

What you'll Do

Help maintain, build, and grow a set of satellite communications, and aircraft systems labs across the Viasat Connectivity Platforms team. These labs support development projects relating to airborne satellite communications. Work hands on with lab hardware, wiring, soldering, planning, scheduling, designing, and executing. Help Inmarsat as the Platforms teams build next generation satellite terminals and connectivity software.

Work with the lab team members in Viasat’s other lab locations. Help guide junior team members through their learning and upskilling. Assist the Lab Manager in prioritizing and completing work, and delegating appropriately, and supporting the lab users.
This is a hands-on role working in the lab, you will need to be in the lab at least two days per week, more if possible. The Lab Team has a goal to have at least one member of the team at the lab site each working day. But scheduling will be flexible. We maintain a number of systems used by multiple platform engineering teams and need to keep them all running and accessible. This role may require occasional travel, including international travel.

The day-to-day

Reporting to the Senior Lab Manager in London, your responsibilities will be:

• Engineer and deliver technical test and development infrastructure
• Maintain Development and QA environments and infrastructure relied upon by Aviation Platform teams
• Support the training and growth of junior team members, new joiners, etc.
• Along with the Lab Manager, help schedule, prioritize, and delegate lab tasks and projects based on the needs of the teams which use the labs, the needs of the company, and availability of those on the team with the appropriate skills
• Schedule and prioritize your own tasks without micromanagement from above.
• Build consistent lab environments across Viasat locations so that they can all be accessible remotely
• Manage existing lab network infrastructure, some using Infra-as-Code management, others using direct device management.
• Build a lab infrastructure which supports development teams which is resistant to power outages and avoids single points of failure
• Close liaison with other Platform Engineering teams to meet requirements, support their priorities and comply with deadlines
• Manage technical requirements, kit and support – with full consideration for the entire life-cycle of equipment
• Help source appropriate technical equipment for the engineering test lab requirements
• Source and manage specialist 3rd party contractors as required
• Support and trouble-shoot development and test campaigns as required
• Ensure that reporting is accurate and provided in a timely manner
• Provide technical and engineering support for other projects as required

Requirements

What you'll Need

This position is a hands-on engineering role and requires practical experience and understanding in the following areas:

• Experience/understanding commercial avionics systems (115v/400Hz, ARINC standards, A600 Connectors, Quadrax, trays etc.)
• Experience/ability to use various aviation and electronic test equipment
• Understanding of AC and DC power systems
• A practical, trained engineer with skills including the ability to run, and terminate cables in a lab environment including cable fabrication
• Mechanically adept with a good working knowledge and understanding of electronics
• Experience in reading and developing schematics as well as working with detailed technical documentation and specifications
• Understanding of electrical cable types and limitations (UV, LSF, LSOH, current, voltage, shielding, isolation, etc.)
• Able to effectively work with others to resolve issues and able to suggest and develop practical, rapid solutions for day-to-day issues
• Problem solving: You know how to apply your skills, and the resources and skills of the team to the problems and tasks we take on
• Continuous Improvement: You look for opportunities to improve yourself, and our processes as you solve problems, you bring improvement proposals to the Lab Manager and the team
• Proactive Mindset: As you work, you’re looking out for future problems, flaws in a project, and look for ways to fix them before they cause disruption
• Able to balance priorities when working with multiple stakeholders from different teams and product groups
• Experience with JIRA and Confluence for task tracking, reporting, and documentation of systems
• Quick thinking and delivery focused with meticulous attention to detail
• Good organisational/project management skills with the ability to multi-task
• Understanding of software development and integration lifecycles
• Hands on experience of networking protocols and working with Cisco and Juniper equipment
• Great knowledge of Linux OS.
• Hands on experience in tools and environments like
o KVM (via libvirt, Proxmox, oVirt)
o Git/GitHub
o Docker / Kubernetes
o Ansible
o Jenkins
o Grafana
o Prometheus

What Will Help You On The Job

• Experience of developing / working in an aviation connectivity and/or SATCOM lab environment
• Understanding of radio frequency (RF) systems and components
• Ability to calculate RF cable losses and power budgets
• Familiarity working with RF waveguides and the associated hazards of high frequency, high energy signals
• Prior knowledge of the satellite communication industry
• Prior knowledge of satellite ground networks
• Aviation STC process experience for either FAA or EASA or both
• Prior experience in formal technical test campaigns
• Knowledge of satellite & cellular industry
• Experience with Python