System Integration & Labs Manager

About Merlin

Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world’s leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation’s biggest challenges.

About you

We are seeking a Systems Integration & Labs Manager to lead the design, build, and operation of HIL, AIR and SIL environments that support flight controls development, autonomy validation, and multi-aircraft integration.

This role owns the physical integration layer of the simulation ecosystem — ensuring stable, repeatable, and scalable deployment of hardware-in-the-loop and lab-based validation environments across multiple aircraft platforms.

Responsibilities

1. Test Environment Leadership

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• Lead the design, build, and lifecycle management of HIL, AIR, and SIL environments
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• Establish configuration control standards for hardware, networking, and physical integration
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• Ensure lab infrastructure scales cleanly across multiple aircraft platforms

1. Integration Stability & Discipline

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• Implement structured integration processes
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• Define and enforce bench configuration versioning and compatibility practices
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• Partner with the Simulation Platform pillar to ensure clean deployment of platform-defined topologies

1. Team Leadership

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• Manage and grow a team of integration engineers
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• Set technical standards for hardware integration, signal integrity, and deployment
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• Provide escalation support during integration and validation events

1. Cross-Functional Coordination

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• Collaborate with Flight Dynamics and Simulation Platform teams
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• Support flight test preparation and remote integration events
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• Interface with Systems, Autonomy, and Compute Platform teams to align integration timelines

Qualifications

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• 8+ years of experience in systems integration, HIL/SIL environments, or complex hardware/software integration
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• Experience leading integration efforts across evolving system configurations
• Strong understanding of real-time I/O, embedded interfaces, and hardware-in-the-loop validation
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• Experience managing technical teams in a multidisciplinary engineering environment
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• Demonstrated ability to bring structure and discipline to evolving integration workflows

Nice to Have

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• Experience with aerospace or autonomy systems
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• Experience deploying virtualized compute infrastructure in lab environments
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• Familiarity with configuration management and compatibility versioning strategies