Engineering Manager, Test Development, Robotics

About Dyson 

Dyson solves the problems others ignore through bold engineering, relentless curiosity, and a refusal to accept ordinary performance. Robotics is a key part of that future. Dyson’s robotics teams work across disciplines including software, electronics, machine learning, sensors, mechatronics, and intelligent systems to develop machines for the home, refining ideas from concept through prototype, debugging, beta trials, and continuous performance improvement in owners’ homes. Singapore is central to that ambition, serving as Dyson’s global headquarters and a major hub for research, robotics, embedded software, advanced manufacturing, and supply chain operations. 

About the Role 

At Dyson, performance is only meaningful if it is proven in the environments our customers actually live in. 

As Test & Validation Manager – Robotics, you will define how Dyson measures, validates, and improves the end-to-end performance of our robotic products in the home. This role sits at the critical interface between verification and validation, ensuring that what is proven in engineering development translates into excellent performance in real customer environments. 

This is not a role focused on navigation alone. Navigation is critical, but it is only one part of the total customer experience. You will lead the strategy, methods, and environments used to validate the full in-home product experience — including cleaning performance, debris pickup across real dusts and hair types, coverage quality, docking behaviour, auto-evacuation performance, reliability, and behavioural robustness across diverse global homes. 

You will work closely with Software, Hardware, Systems, Technology Development, Design, and supplier partners to identify issues early, triage effectively, drive root cause to ground, and confirm fixes through robust evidence. A core part of the role is to ensure Dyson’s simulated home environments remain representative of the homes our customers live in around the world, and that what we learn from real homes, real users, and real markets is continuously fed back into internal validation and supplier capability. 

What You’ll Be Doing 

Own Dyson’s Home Performance Validation Strategy 

• Define and lead the system-level test and validation strategy for robotic home performance across development programmes. 

• Bridge the gap between verification and validation, building confidence that engineering test results predict real customer outcomes. 

• Establish clear performance metrics, acceptance criteria, evidence standards, and confidence measures for product readiness. 

• Drive stronger traceability from requirements → test methods → scenarios → results → product decisions. 

Own End-to-End Product Performance in the Home 

• Define how Dyson evaluates true in-home product performance, not just isolated subsystem function. 

• Lead simulated home approaches for cleaning effectiveness across real-world debris types, including fine dust, larger debris, fibres, long hair, pet hair, and mixed contaminant scenarios. 

• Lead simulated home approaches for coverage quality and completion performance, including missed areas, repeat passes, edge and corner effectiveness, and consistency over time. 

• Lead simulated home approaches for docking performance and dock evacuation behaviour, including alignment, return-to-dock reliability, debris transfer robustness, blockage sensitivity, and end-to-end completion of the cleaning cycle. 

• Ensure performance measures reflect what customers notice and care about, not just simplified internal proxies. 

• Identify and close the gap where strong subsystem performance does not yet translate into strong overall home performance. 

Lead Internal Navigation & Behavioural Validation 

• Define advanced test methods for navigation, localisation, route quality, behavioural robustness, recovery, and scenario completion. 

• Ensure navigation is assessed not only for efficient movement, but for how well it supports optimal cleaning outcomes and overall product behaviour. 

• Validate behaviour in realistic and high-variance home environments, including clutter, furniture density, narrow passages, flooring changes, occlusion, and edge cases. 

• Use data, telemetry, and structured experimentation to connect robot behaviour to cleaning outcome and perceived performance. 

Shape Dyson’s Simulated Home Environments 

• Own the roadmap, design principles, and continuous improvement of Dyson’s simulated home test spaces. 

• Ensure environments reflect the diversity of homes across global markets, including room layouts and spatial constraints, flooring types and transitions, lighting conditions and visibility challenges, clutter patterns and furniture density, and realistic debris conditions, hair loads, and usage states. 

• Define the right balance between repeatability and realism, so validation remains both rigorous and representative. 

• Build confidence that Dyson’s internal environments can reliably reveal the issues customers would experience in the real world. 

Close the Loop Between Real Homes and Internal Validation 

• Work with relevant teams to understand how robotic products behave in actual customer homes and markets. 

• Translate field observations, market variation, user feedback, and product behaviour in real homes into updated validation scenarios, performance targets, and environment requirements. 

• Ensure internal testing evolves with emerging customer behaviours, new home archetypes, and new failure modes. 

• Create a living feedback loop so real-world learning continuously improves validation coverage and product quality. 

Lead Cross-Functional Triage, Root Cause & Resolution 

• Partner closely with SW, HW, Systems, Tech Development, and Design to identify, prioritise, and investigate product performance issues. 

• Drive structured triage and root cause analysis, using evidence from lab testing, simulated homes, telemetry, field data, and prototype builds. 

• Ensure fixes are not only implemented but robustly validated and proven through repeatable evidence. 

• Act as a cross-functional integrator who brings clarity to ambiguous performance problems and helps teams converge on engineering truth. 

Replicate Capability at Supplier and Partner Sites 

• Define what is required to reproduce Dyson’s critical home-performance validation capability at supplier and partner locations. 

• Set standards for environment fidelity, setup consistency, calibration, procedures, data quality, and result comparability. 

• Support capability transfer, training, and governance so supplier-generated data can be trusted and used to support development and industrialisation decisions. 

• Strengthen the link between internal validation and scalable external execution. 

Build Capability and Raise the Standard 

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing test & validation capability, directly or through strong matrix leadership. 

• Raise the maturity of validation methods through better scenario design, clearer metrics, stronger evidence frameworks, and more effective reporting. 

• Improve how teams manage learning, track issues, communicate readiness, and make product decisions with confidence. 

• Champion a culture of rigour, pace, curiosity, ownership, and customer obsession. 

What We’re Looking For 

Essential 

• Significant experience in test, validation, systems integration, or product performance engineering for complex electromechanical, robotic, or autonomous products. 

• Proven experience defining and leading system-level validation strategy, not just executing existing test plans. 

• Strong understanding of how to bridge verification and validation so that lab evidence predicts in-home customer performance. 

• Experience validating end-to-end product performance, including the interaction between software, hardware, behaviour, environment, and customer outcome. 

• Strong technical capability in root cause analysis, structured problem solving, and evidence-led decision making. 

• Demonstrated success working across Software, Hardware, Systems, Design, and Development teams to drive alignment and issue resolution. 

• Strong communication and stakeholder leadership skills, with the ability to influence technical teams and senior programme stakeholders. 

Highly Desirable 

• Experience in robotics, navigation, autonomy, perception-led systems, or intelligent consumer products. 

• Familiarity with simulated environments, hardware-in-the-loop, scenario-based validation, telemetry, or lab-to-field correlation. 

• Experience assessing cleaning or product performance in realistic use conditions, including debris interaction, repeatability, and customer-perceived performance. 

• Exposure to scaling validation capability across global development teams, manufacturing locations, or suppliers. 

• Experience with automation, analytics, dashboards, experimentation, or data pipelines that improve validation quality and speed. 

Leadership Expectations 

• Set direction and standards for Dyson’s home-performance validation capability. 

• Build clarity from ambiguity and translate difficult performance problems into practical action. 

• Make robust trade-offs between realism, repeatability, speed, and engineering confidence. 

• Influence without boundaries, bringing functions together around evidence and outcomes. 

• Build organisational capability for the long term, not just solve the next immediate issue. 

Why This Role Matters 

This role will shape how Dyson proves robotic performance in the homes of customers around the world. 

Dyson is an equal opportunity employer. We know that great minds don’t think alike, and it takes all kinds of minds to make our technology so unique. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, protected veteran status or other any other dimension of diversity.