Supportive community but unclear growth structure - Software Integration and Test Engineer 2 Innoflight Employee Review

Very fast pace and cutting edge

To busy and really need to keep up

The people can be great and the mission can be meaningful — but the execution, leadership alignment, and internal processes make it extremely difficult for anyone in a technical, structured discipline like Configuration Management to succeed without burning out or becoming the department therapist. You will learn a LOT very fast because everything is on fire and you’re the one with the extinguisher. Hands-on, high-impact work. If you’re a builder, you’ll be busy. Exposure to engineering, QA, FPGA teams, and company-wide systems. If you like creating order from chaos… congratulations, you’ll never run out of work. Some genuinely kind engineers and staff who want to do the right thing and appreciate the structure I brought.

Leadership alignment is all over the place. Direction shifts often, and not strategically. You can spend weeks designing a process, workflow, SOP, or CM framework only to have it upended by someone who wasn’t even in the meeting where it was approved. Micromanagement in pockets — especially toward CM and QA. Being told to do things you already knew, already planned, or already completed becomes… a weekly sport. You have to perform competently while also being treated like you just got here yesterday. Heavy technical debt — and CM gets pulled in last. I inherited: • 41,000+ Redmine ticketsan • A migration to JIRA starting way too late • SOPs updated twice in one year due to shifting platforms • Hardware, software, FPGA, and QA teams all blocked by outdated or mismatched processes CM and QA consistently get involved late, and then we’re expected to fix the mess with zero runway. High expectations / little empowerment. You’re responsible for configuration integrity, baselines, audits, ECR/ECO verification, picklists, FPGA changes, Redmine/JIRA workflows, etc. But when you try to implement actual industry-standard structure? It’s “too much,” “too rigid,” or “we’re not ready for that.” Meanwhile, the CMC Audit is in May, and… CM is somehow still treated as optional. Cross-functional relationships can be tense. There are amazing people, but the unnecessary friction between CM, QA, and certain managers makes effective collaboration hard.