SKA Africa: Test and Verification Engineer Vacancy 2024
Closing Date: 18 January 2024
Market Related salary
About the Position
SARAO has an exciting opportunity for a Test and Verification Engineer to join our team based in Cape Town. Working closely with the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Systems Engineer, the successful incumbent will be required to writ semi-automated test scripts to perform tests on the MeerKAT and AVN radio telescopes.
- BEng in Electronic Engineering
Minimum work experience required:
- 5 years’ experience in troubleshooting and fault finding in a related field
Desirable additional educational, work experience, and personal qualities:
- Experience in digital signal processing systems
- Experience in a software development environment
- Creative and innovative approach to developing and testing
- Flexibility and patience to a changing environment
- Passionate about software and firmware
- Interested in personal development and learning testing and verification methods
- Ability to work in a team and work towards a common goal with others at same or higher level
- Formal Systems Engineering knowledge and experience
- Knowledge of radio astronomy instrumentation
- Experience with signal and data processing systems, such as high performance FPGA computing and data processing systems
Duties include (but not limited to):
- The bulk of the successful applicant’s time will be spent translating qualification and acceptance test procedures into automated, software-based test scripts to verify correct operation of DSP instrumentation
- Design, execute and report on suitable testing procedures in order to verify system compliance in accordance to organisational specifications
- Assist with the integration of the DSP subsystem in the MeerKAT and AVN telescopes
- Perform test and verification of DSP subsystem items and components
- Communicate bugs, and required fixes, to firmware and software developers to identify and correct DSP algorithms which failed qualification and acceptance tests
- Document qualification and acceptance test results, and liaise with DSP systems engineer on validity and integrity of results
- Plan and schedule work, and report durations and completions of testing phases to DSP project manager
Ability to:
- write, design and implement test procedures
- perform troubleshooting and fault finding
- display attention to detail with low level supervision
- perform coding in various software environments (primarily Python under Linux) for instrument and/or system integration
- display good documentation skills
Experience in:
- Signal and Data Processing Systems, such as high performance computing and data processing architectures in a FPGA environment (advantageous)
- software development in a Linux environment
- commissioning and systems integration, testing and validation
- Matlab and Python
Knowledge of:
- Mathworks, Matlab Simulink, C, Verilog and VHDL (advantageous)
About The Employer
The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) spearheads South Africa’s activities in the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope, commonly known as the SKA, in engineering, science and construction. SARAO is a National Facility managed by the National Research Foundation and incorporates radio astronomy instruments and programmes such as the MeerKAT and KAT-7 telescopes in the Karoo, the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in Gauteng, the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (AVN) programme in nine African countries as well as the associated human capital development and commercialisation endeavours.
As a business unit of the NRF, SARAO is committed to employment equity and redress.
Type of employment: Permanent Intermediate position
SARAO reserves the right to amend and/or withdraw adverts at any time without notification