Location: Santa Clara, CA
Cap-Exempt H-1B Position — No lottery required
Our Machine Identity Security Team is seeking a Staff Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET). This role is focused on backend and platform-level quality engineering across distributed systems operating at scale. You will work closely with backend, infrastructure, and platform engineering teams to define testing strategy, improve system observability, and drive reliability across cloud-native services and automation pipelines. This role goes beyond traditional QA and requires strong software engineering fundamentals, distributed systems reasoning, and the ability to influence platform quality practices across teams. **What You’ll Do** - Lead the design, development, and evolution of automated test frameworks for backend services, APIs, and distributed platform systems - Define and drive test strategies across unit, integration, end-to-end, resiliency, and failure-testing layers - Partner closely with engineering teams to improve system testability, observability, reliability, and operational readiness - Identify systemic quality gaps and implement scalable automation solutions to improve platform stability and release confidence - Validate distributed system behavior across services, infrastructure layers, asynchronous workflows, and edge-case failure scenarios - Drive improvements across CI/CD pipelines to ensure scalable, reliable, and efficient automated test execution - Debug and troubleshoot failures across application, infrastructure, networking, and platform layers - Influence engineering practices and quality standards across teams through mentorship, technical guidance, and collaboration - Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, product, and platform teams to ensure quality is embedded throughout the development lifecycle **Qualifications** - Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field - 6–10+ years of experience in SDET, backend platform testing, DevOps-focused QA, or software engineering with strong testi