QA Automation Technical Lead

NRG Energy•Lehi, UT

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Vivint Smart Home is seeking a QA Automation Technical Lead to set technical direction for automated testing of its camera and video-device ecosystem and lead the engineers who build and maintain the testing systems. The role partners with camera firmware, video platform, cloud, mobile, QA, hardware, and product teams to shape test strategy and deliver reliable, secure, high-quality video experiences across cameras, panels, bridges, and connected services. The role owns the technical strategy and architecture for automated camera and video testing across devices, firmware, APIs, mobile, cloud, and end-to-end scenarios. It leads and mentors SDETs, oversees the roadmap for automation frameworks and lab infrastructure, reduces flaky tests and technical debt, and serves as the technical escalation point for complex integration issues. The lead also represents camera and video test engineering in architecture, feature, and release planning, and champions AI-assisted practices for test generation, failure analysis, video-quality evaluation, and automation maintenance.

Requirements

At least 6 years of professional test automation experience with embedded, IoT, camera, video, or connected-device systems, including leading technical initiatives or mentoring engineers.
At least 5 years of experience with Python and building maintainable test frameworks, libraries, and diagnostic tooling.
Ability to set technical direction and influence camera, cloud, mobile, firmware, and quality teams without direct authority.
Proven ability to take initiative and drive complex, cross-functional video-quality projects to completion.
Excellent problem-solving and analytical abilities, including isolating failures across devices, networks, media pipelines, applications, and cloud services.
Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to lead and align cross-functional teams.
Experience using AI tools for software design, test development, failure analysis, and code review, including prompt engineering and model/tool selection.
Solid understanding of embedded camera and IoT systems, device lifecycle, networking, and device-to-cloud communication fundamentals.
Hands-on experience with Linux-based devices, logs, services, processes, resource constraints, and system-level troubleshooting.
Deep familiarity with Git, Docker, and GitLab CI/CD for automated testing and deployment, and experience shaping standards for their use.
Ability to troubleshoot camera hardware, firmware, networking, streaming, cloud, and application integration challenges and guide others through similar issues.
Comfort managing competing priorities across a team and consistently delivering high-quality work in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience testing IP cameras, video doorbells, camera bridges, network video recorders, or similar connected video devices.
Knowledge of live streaming, recorded video, clip generation, playback, thumbnails, event-based recording, and cloud video storage workflows.
Familiarity with video and real-time communication technologies such as H.264/H.265, WebRTC, RTSP, RTP, ONVIF, or related media protocols.
Experience validating video quality, startup time, latency, frame rate, resolution, bitrate, packet loss, buffering, audio/video synchronization, and stream recovery.
Strong understanding of Wi-Fi, Ethernet, TCP/IP, DNS, NAT, VPN, bandwidth constraints, and network impairment testing.
Experience testing computer-vision or camera events such as motion detection, person/package detection, detection zones, and notifications.
Familiarity with camera firmware updates, provisioning, pairing, device replacement, configuration, and recovery workflows.
Experience with hardware-in-the-loop systems, camera labs, controllable lighting or motion setups, network emulation, and production-like test environments.
Experience building observability and diagnostics using device logs, cloud logs, metrics, traces, packet captures, and media artifacts.
Track record of improving reliability and reducing flaky tests in large-scale, asynchronous, event-driven automation suites.
Experience building, owning, or scaling shared camera/video automation frameworks and tools.
Prior experience in a technical lead, staff engineer, or similar leadership role.

Responsibilities

Define and drive technical strategy and architecture for automated camera and video testing across device, firmware, API, mobile, cloud, and end-to-end system scenarios.
Lead, mentor, and grow a team of SDETs; establish standards for code quality, video test design, and automation practices.
Own the roadmap for camera and video automation frameworks, lab infrastructure, simulators, and tooling; evaluate and champion new technologies.
Guide reviews of camera and video test plans and prioritize automation scenarios based on customer impact, risk, and repeatability.
Reduce test flakiness and technical debt, including instability related to networks, timing, media pipelines, device state, and shared lab dependencies.
Lead code reviews and establish standards for validating live video, recorded clips, event-triggered capture, playback, audio/video synchronization, latency, and video quality.
Serve as technical escalation point for complex camera, streaming, connectivity, firmware, cloud, and hardware/software integration issues.
Partner with camera firmware, video platform, cloud, mobile, hardware, and manual quality teams on integration strategy, observability, and cross-team troubleshooting.
Represent camera and video test engineering in architecture, feature, and release planning discussions, influencing quality, testability, and production-readiness decisions.
Champion AI-assisted engineering practices for test generation, failure analysis, video-quality evaluation, and automation maintenance.