Senior Applications Engineer - Automotive
Austin, TX

Job Description

Why NI?

For 40 years, National Instruments has worked with engineers and scientists to provide answers to the most challenging questions. NI systems accelerate productivity, innovation, and discovery through an open, software-defined platform. This approach helps engineers develop and increase the performance of automated test and automated measurement systems.

Historically, National Instruments has been a top 100 employer of choice as ranked by several different sources, naming NI one of the top corporate citizens and best places to work.  Maybe it is our fantastic work/life balance, or the Employee Stock Purchase Program and grants, or matching 401K, or picturesque campus with ponds, hiking trails, beach volleyball courts, and collaborative meeting spaces.  If you want to work on cool stuff at a cool company, you're in the right place!  Here's a snippet of some of our core industry leadership.

Watch Video:  NI - A Great Place to Work

* Semiconductor - NI semiconductor test customers report 10X improvement in test times while maintaining measurement and performance requirements.


* Autonomous Automotive - As vehicles advance towards autonomous operation, test engineers face drastically increasing system complexity while dealing with ever present cost and time pressure.


* Aerospace & Defense -  NI provides industry-leading performance and accuracy with best-in-class synchronization for large systems, so you can get to the right decision faster.


* 5G - Setting world records in spectral efficiency using MIMO


* Internet of Things (IoT) - With NI's technology providing unmatched capabilities in measurement, control, ruggedness, and connectivity, along with our expert ecosystem, you can realize the benefits of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) today.



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The Role

The Data Acquisition (DAQ), Control, and Real-Time Test Applications Engineering Team in the Americas Support organization has an immediate opening for a Senior Automotive Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) Applications Engineer. Applications Engineering is a highly collaborative role, working with business owners in Sales, the Transportation Business Unit, Product Planning, Product R&D, and Marketing to drive account growth and proactively invest in target automotive applications, including Electric Vehicles (EV) and Adaptive Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Applications Engineering is the ideal career for engineers who enjoy working with customers in a technical role while continuing to grow as technical and business leaders.

An Automotive HIL Applications Engineer maximizes the value of NI applications for focus industries. By collaborating with business owners across the company, this position enables customer success, customer loyalty, and revenue growth in various design and validation applications in automotive, including:

* Vehicle electrification: signal-level and power-level inverter validation, battery testing, battery charger validation


* Advanced safety: ADAS record and playback, ADAS HIL, Electronic Control Unit (ECU) validation, Vehicle Radar Test Systems



Key Responsibilities

NI Automotive HIL Applications Engineers spend most of their time:

* Consulting with customers as they collect, interpret and refine their technical requirements


* Supporting customers during specification and design of their hardware and software architectures


* Identifying and mitigating high risk items throughout the customer engagement process


* Collaborating with strategy owners and offering managers to proactively invest in HIL applications, focusing primarily on the Transportation Business Unit offerings


* Partnering with Sales on account strategies and planning to drive account growth


* Providing feedback to influencers throughout the company


* Coaching and developing peers in application knowledge and best practices



Work location in Austin, TX

Key Performance Objectives

* Understands common automotive requirements and best practices related to HIL simulation test and applies that knowledge to help customers perform validation testing with the NI hardware and software platforms.


* Collaborates with account managers and customers through the iterative process of requirements gathering and system design to ensure the NI platform is properly utilized and customer systems are setup for success.


* Applies engineering best practices to assist in the design of the hardware and software architectures needed to satisfy customer requirements in a modular and scalable way.


* Establishes strong collaborative relationships with the technical support organization to ensure NI and its partners can deliver on promised value. Furthermore, establishes strong collaborative relationships with NI strategy owners to channel feedback and improvements back into the company.


* Understands account strategies and portfolio of NI offerings to achieve mutual account and NI success by collaborating with account teams to gain further insight on accounts plans and dynamics as well as by being knowledgeable of NI product, support, and service offerings to address challenges.


* Establishes strong ownership and accountability of customer success by playing a unifying role across local and remote support teams and with Sales. Applications Engineers anticipate challenges, prioritize their activities, and drive challenges to resolution.



Basic Qualifications

* Bachelor of Science degree in engineering or another computer science-related subject


* 5 years of experience in the Automotive industry


* 5 years of applied experience with HIL design & validation applications


* Experience programming in a high-level programming language (e.g. C, C , LabVIEW, Python)


* Experience with electronics, circuits, and computer hardware


* Availability to travel up to 25% of time throughout the Americas region



Preferred Qualifications

* Knowledge of EV inverter and battery validation applications


* Knowledge of ADAS validation applications


* Technical knowledge of NI's software and hardware platforms and systems


* 2 years experience in a customer-facing technical role


* Verbal and written communication skills to effectively influence the actions of internal stakeholders and manage external relationships with customers


* Experience managing multiple simultaneous projects and workflows


* Excels in a team-oriented and collaborative work environment


* Software engineering skills


* Analytical and problem-solving skills


* Interpersonal skills


* Business acumen