Senior Software Development Engineer in Test

Job Description

Quick Facts

• Work Policy: Remote (Remote-first culture; US work authorization required)
• Job Type: Full Time
• Salary Range: $145,000 – $185,000 per year
• Experience Level: 10+ years
• Core Tech Stack: Python, Golang, TypeScript, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Docker, Locust, k6, JMeter, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Chaos Mesh, Gremlin, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis

About Runpod

Runpod is the premier AI Developer Cloud. Trusted by over one million developers—ranging from independent researchers to massive teams running frontier models in production—the platform allows users to fine-tune, deploy, scale, train, and experiment with AI in a unified environment. Having successfully processed upwards of 20 billion inference requests, and closing a $100M Series A in June 2026, Runpod stands at a critical inflection point for AI infrastructure, actively building the platform the next generation of developers will rely on entirely.

Operating as a small, remote-first team, Runpod values intense ownership, rapid movement, and shipping work that impacts millions daily. They seek professionals who care deeply about their craft, build with urgency, and want their work to matter at an extraordinary scale.

About the Role

Runpod is seeking a highly experienced and exceptionally skilled Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to join their rapidly scaling team. This role is absolutely pivotal in guaranteeing the performance, scalability, and reliability of their large-scale distributed systems. The ideal candidate will possess profound expertise in validating complex, high-performance infrastructure, utilizing an automation-first testing strategy deeply rooted in cloud-native architectures.

As one of the foundational engineers on Runpod’s QA team, you will have the unique opportunity to mold their quality standards, automation frameworks, and testing strategy as the company scales. You will operate across the entire platform, evaluating billing systems, storage, Instant Clusters, batch jobs, Serverless endpoints, and GPU Pods. The infrastructure you test spans complex event-driven pipelines, GraphQL APIs, and Go services running concurrently on thousands of GPU hosts globally.

What You’ll Do

• Automation-Driven Quality: Prioritize sophisticated automated testing strategies to rigorously validate system reliability, scalability, and performance, drastically increasing test coverage while reducing manual effort.
• Resilience Testing at Scale: Proactively design aggressive tests to assess self-healing capabilities, high availability, and fault tolerance across globally distributed environments.
• Performance and Load Testing: Execute and build complex test strategies to guarantee the infrastructure scales flawlessly under extreme workloads.
• Shift-Left Testing: Embed testing early into the development lifecycle, ensuring reliability and quality from the very inception of new features.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Leverage real-world traffic patterns, analytics, and metrics to continuously improve system reliability and refine testing methodologies.
• Architect, maintain, and develop highly robust test automation frameworks specifically for cloud-scale distributed systems.
• Build stress, load, and performance tests to validate system resilience under intense high-traffic conditions.
• Construct chaos engineering and fault-injection strategies to thoroughly assess the reliability of distributed services.
• Execute and develop system-level, API, and end-to-end integration tests across complex microservices-based architectures.
• Deploy continuous testing pipelines within CI/CD workflows to massively accelerate deployment cycles.
• Collaborate intimately with infrastructure, SRE, and development teams to ensure quality best practices are deeply embedded within the SDLC.
• Analyze observability metrics, telemetry data, and system logs to mitigate and identify potential failures before they hit production.
• Drive the rigorous automation of infrastructure testing, API contract validation, and security testing.
• Participate in standard on-call rotations to help diagnose critical production issues linked to performance and system reliability.

What You’ll Need

• 10+ Years of professional experience in Software Engineering, SDET, QA Automation, or a related technical field.
• Profound expertise in testing cloud-scale distributed systems, maintaining a massive focus on scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Exceptional programming skills in at least one core language, strongly preferring Typescript, Golang, or Python.
• Direct, hands-on experience engineering test automation frameworks tailored for complex microservices architectures.
• A deep, working understanding of automated deployment strategies, infrastructure as code (IaC), and CI/CD pipelines.
• Extensive background utilizing observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Prometheus) and load testing tools (e.g., JMeter, k6, Locust).
• Proven track record testing Kubernetes-based environments and heavily containerized applications.
• Strong expertise navigating fault injection frameworks and chaos engineering (e.g., LitmusChaos, Gremlin, Chaos Mesh).
• Solid knowledge of debugging and distributed tracing within cloud-native environments.
• Experience operating with event-driven architectures, databases, and message queues (e.g., Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka).
• Must successfully complete a standard background check and be eligible to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.

Nice to Have

• A Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
• Previous experience managing multi-region cloud deployments across Azure, GCP, or AWS.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks and security testing.
• A background in managing vast fleets of AI/GPU compute resources.
• Superb problem-solving and analytical skills, paired with a deep passion for improving system quality at massive scale.

Benefits

• Highly competitive base pay ranging from $145,000 to $185,000 annually, depending on qualifications and experience.
• Meaningful equity in a rapidly growing company—every team member receives stock options to share directly in the upside of the company’s growth.
• Generous vision, dental, and medical insurance plans.
• A flexible PTO policy, actively encouraging you to take the time you need to recharge.
• A remote-first work environment utilizing Slack as the primary form of internal communication within highly collaborative, inclusive teams.
• A $1,200 Equipment & Home Office Stipend to set you up for success from day one.
• The opportunity to join a passionate team operating on the bleeding edge of AI infrastructure.