About The Borderlands Group
The Borderlands Group is a defence advisory and engineering company. We partner with international defense technology companies to help them build, deploy, test, and scale their products in real operational environments.
Our work connects international defence innovators with Ukraine’s engineering talent, operational expertise, and real-world product feedback. Depending on the project, we support our partners with engineering, field operations, technical recruitment, product testing, and building local capabilities in Ukraine.
We are currently looking for a Senior Field & Test Engineer to join the growing Ukraine-based team of one of our international defence-tech clients.
The company is developing a complex technology product at the intersection of mechanics, electronics, firmware, and software. The product is designed for demanding operational environments, where reliability, performance, and real-world usability are critical.
About the role
You are the senior technical person on the ground in Ukraine. Prototype units arrive from our engineering team, go onto operators, get used hard, and break in ways nobody predicted. Your job is to keep the fleet alive, understand every failure at a root-cause level, and turn field chaos into engineering data the design team can act on.
Today, a broken unit can mean weeks of lost testing. With you here, it means days or hours. You are the difference between the iteration loop spinning and stalling.
- Tear down, diagnose, and repair electromechanical prototype units: actuators, drivetrains, battery systems, motor controllers, sensors, harnesses, structural components
- Build and maintain a field workshop in Kyiv: tools, spares inventory, repair benches, test rigs
- Run structured field tests with military operators: instrument units, define test conditions, capture data, document failures with photos, video, and written analysis
- Perform field modifications and quick-turn fixes so testing continues while permanent fixes are designed
- Produce root-cause failure reports that feed directly into the next hardware revision. Your analysis shapes what gets built
- Fit and adjust units on operators, train users, and gather structured feedback on comfort, controls, and performance
- Work daily with our engineering team (async, English) on failure data, design questions, and incoming build reviews
- Travel within Ukraine to units and test sites as needed
- 5+ years hands-on with electromechanical hardware: robotics, drones, UGVs, automotive, industrial machinery, or defense systems. You have physically built, broken, and fixed real machines
- Strong mechanical skills: disassembly and assembly of precision mechanisms, machining or fabrication basics, reading and interpreting CAD and drawings
- Solid electronics competence: BLDC motors and drivers, lithium battery packs, wiring harnesses, soldering, multimeter and oscilloscope diagnostics
- Systematic debugging: you find root causes, not just symptoms, and you write them down clearly
- Self-directed under ambiguity: no procedures manual exists, you create it
- Working English (written and spoken) for daily coordination with US and international engineering. Ukrainian fluency for operator work
- Based in or willing to relocate to Kyiv, and comfortable with field environments including proximity to active military training
- Military service or extensive direct work with military units
- Firmware familiarity: reading logs, flashing controllers, basic scripting for data capture
- Experience working with Chinese or international hardware supply chains
Build around the human
Work on advanced technology designed to enhance human physical capability and performance.
Shape the product early
Join at a stage where your engineering decisions can have a fundamental impact on the product and its technical direction.
Own difficult problems
Work hands-on across complex physical hardware in an environment built around rapid learning, experimentation and real-world performance.
Grow with the company
Take significant ownership from day one, with the opportunity to expand your impact as the product, team and company grow.
Highly competitive compensation
We offer a highly competitive package reflecting your experience, expertise and level of responsibility.
