Engineering Manager, SDET - AI Detection and Response (AIDR) (Hybrid)

CrowdStrike • Sunnyvale, CA

12d • $140,000 - $215,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

CrowdStrike is seeking an experienced SDET Engineering Manager to lead our quality engineering efforts within the AI Detection and Response (AIDR) team. In this role, you will lead a team of SDETs responsible for end-to-end validation of AIDR services — a platform that processes millions of AI security events per second and manages petabytes of critical AI data. Your team will own test strategy, tooling, frameworks, and automation across both cloud-side backend services and UI applications, ensuring the system behaves correctly at every stage from individual components to full system behavior. This is a deeply technical, hands-on leadership position where you are expected to be in the weeds daily — writing code, building test frameworks, debugging complex distributed system failures, and leading by example. You'll set the quality bar not just through strategy and process, but by demonstrating what engineering excellence looks like. While you will grow and mentor your team, you will remain a strong individual contributor who also leads people. Your team's work spans functional, performance, contract, and chaos/resilience engineering — ensuring that AIDR's services maintain the highest standards of reliability and security as we protect organizations worldwide from sophisticated AI-based threats.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software development/SDET roles, with at least 3+ years in an engineering management role leading SDET or quality engineering teams
• Strong hands-on coding ability — able to write production-quality test frameworks, debug complex distributed systems, and contribute meaningfully to the codebase when the team needs it
• Proven experience building testing frameworks and tooling for Cloud SaaS products or similar SOA at scale
• Experience defining and driving testing strategy at a team or organizational level
• Strong debugging skills: ability to spot design flaws, race conditions, and performance bottlenecks in complex distributed architectures
• Expertise in at least one of: Golang, Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript — Go is our primary backend language, but strong engineers in any of these are welcome
• Deep experience in a cloud distributed systems stack: e.g., Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, and/or similar technologies
• Experience with cloud services such as AWS, GCP, or OCI, particularly compute and storage offerings
• Extensive experience with testing tools and frameworks (e.g., Jest, Cypress, Playwright, JUnit, TestNG, Go testing)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and integrating automated testing into deployment workflows
• Experience developing and deploying in containerized environments (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience testing REST and/or gRPC APIs and real-time or high-volume data systems
• Strong people leadership skills — demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain high-performing engineers while remaining technically hands-on
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate quality strategy to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Proven experience utilizing AI technologies to enhance decision-making, streamline workflows, and drive business outcomes

Nice To Haves

• Previous experience in cybersecurity companies or security-focused products
• Understanding of AI/ML security challenges, threats, and mitigation strategies
• Experience with low-latency cloud services using gRPC and event-driven messaging systems such as Kafka or Pulsar
• Experience with chaos engineering and resilience testing (e.g., Chaos Monkey, Litmus, Gremlin)
• Experience with UI test automation and front-end validation frameworks
• Experience with performance testing and load generation at scale
• Hands-on experience with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and/or Microsoft Azure
• Experience leveraging AI and agentic tools to enhance testing workflows and automation
• Golang experience
• Experience managing teams that own shared testing infrastructure consumed by multiple product teams
• Track record of building quality engineering culture from the ground up
• Contributions to open source libraries or frameworks

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of SDETs while being hands-on enough to build test frameworks, write automation, develop tooling, and debug complex failures alongside your team
• Own and drive testing strategy across functional, performance, contract, and chaos/resilience testing concerns for the AIDR platform
• Be in the weeds on production issues — tracing distributed calls, identifying root causes, and writing regression tests to prevent recurrence
• Participate actively in code and design reviews — reviewing both your team's work and product code with a quality-first lens, providing guidance on testability and code hygiene
• Define and maintain quality gates across CI/CD pipelines, ensuring automated validation is comprehensive and reliable
• Partner with backend and UI engineering managers to align on quality standards, shared tooling, and testing best practices
• Manage team capacity, sprint planning, and delivery commitments while balancing framework investments with feature validation needs
• Contribute to service operations, including improving observability, monitoring, and implementing quality improvements to prevent outages
• Recruit, hire, and onboard top SDET talent; conduct performance reviews and support career development
• Leverage AI-powered tools and agentic workflows to enhance testing automation and efficiency

Benefits

• Market leader in compensation and equity awards
• Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs
• Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge
• Paid parental and adoption leaves
• Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role
• Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connections
• Vibrant office culture with world class amenities
• Great Place to Work Certified™ across the globe
• health insurance
• 401k
• paid time off
• bonuses
• equity grants

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed