Hondajet and Cessna always had one or two around when I was there and I sometimes assigned them tasks to do. But with so few slots it's hard to get FT specifically, you may wish to try for another engineering department and see if you can get FT the second or third time around by asking repeatedly for it. FT engineer and FT pilot are related disciplines, but they are totally different career tracks for the most part, so do not confuse the two. Piper and perhaps Cirrus tend to blend those titles together more than most departments because they have no jets but the companies with multiengine turbines tend to make them very separate. You can be a flying engineer or you can be a desk engineer- the former are often military (flying) people in past life, and the latter are often research-based in related sciences. You are after FT engineer, as in the desk variety, not the flying kind unless they offer that track to you specifically. Cessna used to have a test pilot track for desk engineers, but that was years ago. Your school reputation, grades, interest in flight test as a career, and after that your personality are what they look for. Your school, gpa, and personality are kind of fixed by the time of the interview, so the best thing to do is to try and impress them with your knowledge of FT careers in general and hopefully bring a recommendation or two from one of their (or their competitors) engineers showing how serious you are about flight test specifically. Talk about where you plan on attending FT graduate school etc. Also, you would be surprised how few desk engineers in flight test are advanced pilots, not many. Most stop at the instrument rating level and have no turbine or pro flying PIC whatsoever. Instead, they have lots of skills the pilot do not have like software coding, data analysis and presentation, document generation for certification, masters of science in aero/mechanical/ee, and so on. Feel free to PM me about it.