Field Test Engineer

About the role

What you’ll do

• Plan and execute test campaigns on public roads and closed tracks against written test cases, with defined entry and abort criteria.
• Operate the vehicles in supervised autonomous mode, following safety driver protocols, and intervene correctly when the system misbehaves.
• Capture complete, well-annotated logs for each run, and file clear issue reports with timestamps, conditions and reproduction steps.
• Perform daily vehicle checks, sensor cleaning and basic calibration verification, and escalate hardware faults to the hardware team.
• Triage interventions and disengagements with software engineers, separating system faults from environmental or operator causes.
• Maintain test equipment, soft targets and track layouts, and help set up repeatable scenarios for regression testing.

What you’ll bring

• Experience in vehicle testing, robotics field work, automotive engineering, aviation operations or a similar hands-on technical role.
• A clean driving record and willingness to complete safety driver training and follow strict operating procedures.
• Comfort with a Linux laptop, command-line tools and reading logs and plots, and enough scripting to pull and check data.
• Attention to detail in documentation: notes that another engineer can use to reproduce the event without asking you.
• Calm judgement under pressure, including the discipline to stop a test when conditions are not as planned.
• Willingness to work early starts, some weekends and outdoor conditions as the test schedule requires.

Nice to have

• Experience as a safety driver or test engineer on an automated driving or advanced driver assistance programme.
• Familiarity with CAN bus tools, GNSS ground truth setups or data loggers.
• Background in proving ground operations, including soft target and dummy pedestrian setups.
• Basic mechanical or electrical skills for vehicle maintenance in the field.

Work you might take on

1. 01

   Run a week-long evaluation of night-time pedestrian detection on the track using standard dummies, and deliver a clean dataset with annotated misses.

2. 02

   Create a standard pre-drive checklist and sensor verification routine that catches calibration drift before a vehicle leaves the garage.

3. 03

   Reproduce an intermittent hard-brake report on public roads by recreating conditions, and hand perception engineers the logs that explain it.

4. 04

   Set up a repeatable cut-in scenario on the track with surrogate vehicles, so planning changes can be compared drive to drive.

Compensation

$120K – $180K

The US base salary range for this role. Every offer also includes equity in Clexerl and, when it spins out, in the venture you help build. We tell you the reasoning behind your number.

Benefits

• Health, fully covered

  Medical, dental and vision for you and your dependants, premiums paid in full.

• Two kinds of equity

  Equity in Clexerl, plus a stake in the venture you help build when it spins out.

• 22 weeks parental leave

  Fully paid, for every parent, however your family arrives.

• Rest that sticks

  Flexible time off with a four-week minimum we actually check on, plus a company-wide week in December.

• Learning and compute

  A yearly budget for courses, conferences and books, and compute credits for side projects.

• 401(k) with a 4% match

  Matched from your first paycheque and vested immediately.

How we hire

1. Apply 5 minutes

   Send links to what you have built and a few lines on why this role. No cover letter needed.

2. Intro call 30 minutes

   A conversation with the hiring manager about the work, the team and what you want next.

3. Work sample 2–4 hours

   A paid take-home or a pairing session on a real-shaped problem. You pick the format.

4. Studio day One day

   Meet the team, go deep on your work and ours. Remote or in person.

5. Offer Within 5 days

   A written offer with the full range, the equity and the reasoning behind both.