Embedded Firmware Test Automation

I’m preparing a new release of our embedded-system firmware and want every performance metric captured automatically before each build ships. Your task is to design and implement an automated performance-test suite that runs against our target hardware, delivers repeatable results, and plugs straight into our existing CI pipeline.

I prefer the solution to be written in C# on .NET because the rest of our tooling already lives in that ecosystem. If you feel that Python + pytest, C + Unity, or another approach would shave time off execution or simplify hardware access, let me know—flexibility is fine as long as the final workflow remains seamless for my team.

Key deliverables
• C#/.NET test harness that exercises the firmware on our embedded boards, measuring throughput, latency, memory, and CPU usage under defined load profiles
• Scripts or configs for headless execution from the command line and CI (we use GitLab CI)
• Clear documentation covering setup, dependencies, and how to extend tests for future firmware versions
• Summary report generation in both human-readable and machine-parsable formats (CSV or JSON)

Acceptance criteria
• All performance tests run with a single command and complete within the time budget we’ll set during kickoff
• Results are reproducible across at least three consecutive runs on the same hardware
• Any failure or regression exits with a non-zero status so CI can block the build
• Code is lint-clean and pushed to our private repo via merge request for review

If this aligns with your experience, especially with .NET interacting directly with embedded targets over UART, JTAG, or SWD, let’s lock in the details and get the first milestone underway.