Test Engineer - IoT / Audio / Video / Networks in Slough

This is a rare chance to join a startup at the very beginning – where your curiosity, ideas, and input will directly influence the product roadmap. You’ll be working closely with a small, experienced engineering team, building real features in a modern frontend codebase from day one.

We’re using modern technology stacks across our infrastructure and frontend, and AI-assisted tooling to move fast and stay focused – and you’ll be an integral part of shaping both the user experience and the engineering foundations as we scale.

As a Product Reliability Engineer, you’ll sit at the intersection of software, hardware, and field performance – helping ensure that what we ship works flawlessly in the real world, not just in simulation.

You’ll design and run hands-on test scenarios, from measuring battery life and thermal performance to validating cellular, Wi-Fi, and GPS behaviour and develop automation that keeps our testing fast, repeatable, and data-driven. This is a role for a curious builder: someone who’s as happy wiring up a Raspberry Pi to control a test rig as they are writing Python scripts to process test results.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute system-level tests covering power consumption, network connectivity (cellular, Wi-Fi, GPS), audio/video performance, and environmental conditions.
• Meticulously hunt for product bugs and vulnerabilities, defects in functional usage, security penetration, making sure the end-to-end solution excels at scale.
• Formulate a test strategy and futureproof test coverage across a large and evolving feature set.
• Build and maintain hardware-in-the-loop test rigs, using things like Raspberry Pis, microcontrollers, programmable power supplies, and sensors to measure and automate test cycles.
• Develop lightweight automation (e.g. in Python, Bash, or Go) to coordinate tests, capture logs, and visualise results – scaling manual insights into repeatable processes.
• Simulate intense, large-scale usage to find breaking points and ensure our systems are resilient, reliable, and ready for primetime.
• Work with hardware, firmware and cloud teams to validate end-to-end reliability across device, app, and backend systems.
• Simulate real-world operating conditions (e.g. variable signal, heat, or motion) to uncover intermittent or long-duration faults.
• Document findings and edge cases clearly, collaborating with engineers to fix root causes and improve design robustness.
• Contribute to a reliability mindset – embedding testability and validation hooks into new designs early in development.

What we’re looking for

• A solid foundation in PRE (product reliability engineering), and test, through strong academic study, or hands-on projects.
• Practical experience in testing hardware and software systems, embedded devices, or IoT products – ideally including power and connectivity testing.
• Comfortable building simple test fixtures using Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or similar platforms.
• Some scripting or automation ability (Python preferred), with interest in scaling manual tests.
• Curiosity about how things work (and break), with a structured and methodical approach to experimentation.
• Familiarity with video/audio systems, sensors, or networking technologies is a plus.
• Enthusiasm to learn – we value resourcefulness and initiative over ticking every box.
• Interest in modern technologies (e.g. Vue, React, TypeScript, Go, Python), and working with video and audio technologies.
• An eagerness to get your hands dirty, test products to their absolute limits, and rapidly accelerate your skills in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Great communication and a collaborative approach to working with others.
• A natural knack for finding edge cases and a genuine passion for understanding how things work (and how they break!).

Mayflower is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.