UAV Test & Validation Engineer

Do you want to work with the 15th fastest-growing startup in Europe? If so, you’re in the right place.

AssetCool is one of Europe’s fastest-growing startups, building the fastest path to more power on the grid.

We’re tackling one of the most urgent challenges in the global energy transition: grid congestion. Electricity demand is rising fast; driven by electrification, AI and data centres. While traditional grid upgrades take years, demand exists today. The grid isn’t ready.

AssetCool delivers robotic grid upgrades that physically increase the capacity of existing transmission lines by up to 30%, without rebuilding infrastructure. Using advanced robotics and proprietary photonic coatings, we unlock data-centre-scale capacity in weeks to months, not years and at a fraction of the cost and disruption of conventional approaches.

Our technology goes beyond capacity. We reduce losses, prevent corrosion, cut corona noise and generate high-value operational data that supports smarter grid operation and maintenance. Our systems are already deployed globally, and we just raised a big funding round from leading energy and climate investors.

AssetCool is one of the most innovation-driven companies in the UK energy sector and we’re scaling fast! If you’re ambitious, mission-driven and excited to work on real deployments that strengthen the industry that really matters, AssetCool is where you can make it happen.

Role Overview

AssetCool is looking for a UAV Flight Test & Validation Engineer to own the end-to-end testing and validation of our in-house developed UAV systems. You will define test strategies, lead indoor and outdoor flight campaigns, assess system readiness and ensure that decisions are backed by clear, traceable evidence.

This role is for someone who genuinely loves flying and is equally at home planning a safe experiment, piloting an aircraft and investigating a difficult technical fault. You will work at the intersection of propulsion, flight control, navigation, avionics, autonomy and regulatory compliance. Please note that this role will require quite a bit of field based work.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the UAV verification and validation lifecycle: test strategies, requirement traceability, test plans and cases, acceptance criteria, readiness reviews and final reports.
• Plan and lead safe indoor and outdoor ground and flight testing of in-house platforms and integrated payloads, coordinating sites, crew, equipment, weather and airspace.
• Design experiments to characterise performance, endurance, handling, robustness and failure behaviour across propulsion, control, navigation, communications, power and payload subsystems.
• Configure and operate PX4 and ArduPilot systems end to end: airframe setup, sensor calibration, parameters, flight modes, failsafes, geofencing, telemetry, logging and ground-control-station configuration.
• Diagnose faults across subsystem boundaries: propulsion and powertrain (motors, ESCs, props, batteries, thrust, thermal, vibration); flight control (stability, tuning, actuator limits, control allocation, mode transitions, failsafes); and navigation and state estimation (IMUs, GNSS, compasses, barometers, RTK, sensor fusion, estimator health).
• Develop supporting test methods, instrumentation and rigs, including bench and propulsion tests, data acquisition and SITL/HITL testing where appropriate.
• Own test records, configuration baselines, flight logs, anomalies and evidence. Analyse log data, identify root causes, communicate findings and verify corrective actions.
• Run flight-readiness reviews, safety briefings and post-flight debriefs, and maintain accurate checklists, risk assessments, occurrence records and test documentation.
• Support regulatory compliance, operational authorisations and certification by defining suitable tests, maintaining auditable evidence and contributing to safety cases, manuals and technical submissions.