I&C Lead
Instrumentation & Control - Villeneuve, CH
The position
- Crew
- Instrumentation & Control
- Location
- Villeneuve, CH
- Type of contract
- Full-time
Your role
A test produces exactly one thing that lasts, its data, and every design decision at PAVE Space is only as good as the data it rests on.
PAVE Space is building LYOBA, a heavy kick stage moving up to 4-ton payloads from LEO to high-energy orbits in under 24 hours. Our engine bench is running, a turbopump assembly stand is next, and around six stands are being built across Villeneuve and Chavalon before a vertical fire stand follows. The instrumentation and control on each of them decides whether a result is evidence or just an assumption.
So, why now?
A few automation engineers and technicians are spread across all of these stands at once. What's missing is one person who sees every blocker, knows how long design, commissioning, and troubleshooting really take, and decides what gets done when, week by week.
You will own
The full picture across every stand: blockers, design time, commissioning and troubleshooting effort, and what has to happen when
Coordination of the automation engineers and technicians, so a small team covers many stands without anyone working on the wrong thing
Sensor and instrumentation expertise: selection, signal conditioning, grounding, calibration, and measurement uncertainty
Data integrity from sensor to database: traceable, validated, and solid enough to be used as evidence for the next test iteration
The tooling that makes this possible, built on TwinCAT, Ignition, PostgreSQL, Grafana, and Python
Commissioning and troubleshooting when a stand is blocked, from 24 V DC control cabinets to high-power pumps and drives
What we are looking for
Proven experience in industrial automation or test-stand I&C, with stands you took through commissioning
Deep instrumentation knowledge. You know how a measurement can lie, and how to prove it doesn't
Experience coordinating engineers and technicians across parallel projects, and estimating design and commissioning time realistically
Comfortable reading, reviewing, and producing electrical schematics
PLC and SCADA experience, ideally Beckhoff TwinCAT and Ignition, with a working knowledge of industrial networks and field protocols
Python and SQL good enough to build data tools other people rely on
French and English, both fluently
Nice to have: propulsion or rocket engine test stands; hazardous fluids such as HTP and RP-1; functional safety (SIL, PL) and safety PLC programming; time-series data pipelines.
You will fit if
You treat a test without trustworthy data as a test that didn't happen.
You know where every stand is this week, what's blocking it, and what has to move first.
You'd rather spend an hour on a calibration check than a week defending a result nobody trusts.
You own the outcome across all the stands, not just the ones you touched.
This is hard, early, and fully on-site in Villeneuve (VD) and at our test site in Chavalon, 20 minutes away, because we have a strong on-site culture. The team is small for the number of stands, priorities shift as tests teach us things, and not every stand will commission on the first try. What makes that worth it: every iteration of LYOBA's engine and turbopump will rest on data your team produced, and you'll be the reason it can be taken as truth.
We are building to ship, grounded on real hardware, real funding, real milestones. Apply to contribute, surrounded by people as sharp as you are, or send this to the I&C lead you'd trust with your own test data.