Test Automation Engineer - NI VeriStand to Python Migration
Overview:
Client is a global medical device manufacturer. Their Acute Care R&D group develops connected electromechanical patient-support platforms (hospital beds and stretchers) with embedded firmware, sensing, actuation, and network connectivity. Verification runs on custom Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) benches built on National Instruments PXI hardware.
The client is consolidating verification tooling onto a single Python-based test framework. This role migrates the existing NI VeriStand test asset library into that framework preserving functional equivalence, test coverage, and verification traceability.
Required Skills:
- 5+ years embedded systems, firmware, or system-level test engineering on physical hardware
- NI VeriStand hands-on: system definition (.nivssdf), Real-Time Sequences (.nivsseq), stimulus profiles, workspace/screen configuration, custom devices; deploying to NI real-time targets
- NI hardware: PXI/PXIe chassis, real-time controllers, DAQ modules, signal conditioning; configuration in NI MAX
- Python: production-quality - OOP design, pytest or comparable, fixtures, hardware abstraction, structured logging and reporting
- NI Python APIs: nidaqmx, nixnet, pyvisa, or demonstrable equivalent instrument-control work in Python
- Electronics: reads schematics fluently, confident probing live PCBAs, proficient with scope, DMM, logic analyzer, bench supplies, electronic loads
- Protocols: CAN and CAN FD, I²C, SPI, UART/RS-232/RS-485 - at debugging level, not just familiarity
- HIL concepts: closed-loop simulation, plant models, signal conditioning, fault insertion, real-time determinism
- Tooling: Git; Jira, Azure DevOps, Polarion, or Jama
Responsibilities:
Analysis & reverse engineering
- Analyze the existing VeriStand library: system definition files, Real-Time Sequences, stimulus profiles, workspace configurations, custom devices and document functional intent, signal mapping, and coverage of each test
- Reconstruct test intent where documentation is thin or original authors are unavailable
- Produce a migration inventory and sequencing plan covering dependencies, complexity, and priority
Migration & Development
- Port VeriStand test logic into the Python framework, maintaining functional equivalence with the legacy implementation
- Build and extend Python hardware-abstraction layers over the NI stack - nidaqmx (DAQ, analog/digital I/O), nixnet (CAN/CAN FD), pyvisa (instrument and serial control) and over PXI chassis and real-time targets
- Implement reusable fixtures, drivers, and utilities so the migrated suite is maintainable, not a one-for-one transliteration
- Integrate migrated tests into version control and automated execution
Verification of the migration
- Design and execute an equivalence strategy: run legacy VeriStand and migrated Python tests against the same device under test and reconcile results
- Investigate discrepancies, distinguishing genuine defects from timing, resolution, or signal-conditioning differences between environments
- Document equivalence evidence to a standard suitable for design-control review
Bench & hardware work
- Bring up and maintain HIL benches: PXI chassis, NI modules, signal conditioning, wiring harnesses, load banks, simulated sensors and actuators
- Debug at signal level with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, multimeters, protocol analyzers
- Support fault-insertion and boundary-condition testing on electromechanical subsystems
Documentation & quality
- Maintain traceability from migrated tests to source requirements and test protocols
- Support test-tool validation and produce documentation consistent with design-control and DHF expectations
- Participate in peer code review, protocol review, and defect triage
Preferred (5-8 years of Testing exp)
- Medical device experience under design controls - ISO 13485, IEC 62304, ISO 14971, FDA QMSR / 21 CFR Part 820
- Test method validation (TMV) and software tool validation in a regulated environment
- LabVIEW and NI TestStand - especially for interpreting legacy custom devices and sequence orchestration
- Simulink or model-based plant simulation feeding VeriStand
- Electromechanical test: motor control, actuators, load cells, position/force sensing, battery systems
- IEC 60601-1 and 60601-1-2 familiarity
- CI/CD for hardware test (Jenkins, GitLab CI) and automated test reporting
Screening note
This is not a fit for a general software test engineer with scripting experience. The differentiator is instrument and circuit-board fluency combined with software engineering discipline, someone who can probe a signal to explain why a migrated test behaves differently, then write clean reviewable Python to fix it. Technical screen should cover VeriStand architecture, CAN bus debugging, and practical Python instrument-control exercise.
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