Senior Software Development Engineer in Test

Runpod

1d • $175,000 - $200,000 • Remote

About The Position

Runpod is seeking a highly skilled and experienced Software Development Engineer in Test to help ensure the reliability, scalability, and performance of its large-scale distributed systems. The role focuses on cloud-native architectures and automation-first testing, including resilience, performance, load, and shift-left testing. The team uses metrics, analytics, and real-world traffic patterns to continuously improve testing methods and system reliability.

As one of the first engineers on Runpod’s QA team, the SDET will help shape the company’s testing strategy, automation frameworks, and quality standards. The role spans the platform’s GPU Pods, Serverless endpoints, batch jobs, Instant Clusters, storage, and billing systems, as well as GraphQL APIs, Go services running across GPU hosts worldwide, and event-driven pipelines. The SDET will work closely with Engineering and SRE teams to build integration and end-to-end tests, review code, identify issues before production, and promote measurable, continuous quality improvement.

This role is an opportunity to establish QA foundations while influencing the reliability, performance, and scalability of Runpod’s platform. Participation in on-call rotations is required to help diagnose critical production reliability and performance issues.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in QA Automation, SDET, software engineering, or a related technical field.
• Expertise in testing cloud-scale distributed systems, with a strong focus on reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Strong programming skills in at least one language, preferably Python, Golang, or TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience building test automation frameworks for complex microservices architectures.
• Deep understanding of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (IaC), and automated deployment strategies.
• Extensive experience with load testing tools such as Locust, k6, or JMeter, and observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or Datadog.
• Proven experience testing containerized applications and Kubernetes-based environments.
• Strong expertise in chaos engineering and fault-injection frameworks such as Chaos Mesh, Gremlin, or LitmusChaos.
• Knowledge of distributed tracing and debugging in cloud-native environments.
• Experience with message queues, databases, and event-driven architectures, such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Redis.
• Successful completion of a background check.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with multi-region cloud deployments in AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Familiarity with security testing and compliance frameworks.
• Background in managing fleets of GPU/AI compute resources.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and a passion for improving system quality at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain robust test automation frameworks for cloud-scale distributed systems.
• Architect performance, load, and stress tests to validate system resilience under high-traffic conditions.
• Build fault-injection and chaos engineering strategies to assess the reliability of distributed services.
• Develop and execute end-to-end integration, API, and system-level tests across microservices-based architectures.
• Implement continuous testing pipelines within CI/CD workflows to accelerate deployment cycles.
• Collaborate with development, SRE, and infrastructure teams to embed quality best practices within the SDLC.
• Analyze system logs, telemetry data, and observability metrics to identify and mitigate potential failures before they affect production.
• Drive automation of security testing, API contract validation, and infrastructure testing.
• Participate in on-call rotations to assist in diagnosing critical production issues related to system reliability and performance.

Benefits

• Competitive base pay ranging from $175,000 to $200,000; the range may cover several career levels and will be narrowed during the interview process based on experience, qualifications, and location.
• Meaningful equity through stock options for everyone on the team.
• Generous medical, dental, and vision plans.
• Flexible PTO.
• $1,200 home office and equipment stipend.
• Opportunity to join a passionate team working on AI infrastructure, with culture, learning, and ownership emphasized.

What This Job Offers

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