Sr Software Development Engineer in Test, ML

PlayStation Global•San Mateo, CA

15h•Hybrid

About The Position

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is seeking a Sr Software Development Engineer in Test, ML to join their San Mateo team. This role will lead quality efforts for machine learning-powered products and services. The engineer will partner closely with ML engineers, software engineers, product managers, and data partners to build scalable test automation and validation approaches for systems serving PlayStation at a global scale. The focus of this role is on building confidence in model reliability, production readiness, and behavioral consistency. Success in this role requires validating probabilistic systems through score distributions, cohort-level behavior, thresholds, and statistical signals, rather than just deterministic pass/fail assertions.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent
Minimum 3 - 5 years of experience as an SDET, with strong experience testing backend systems.
Proficiency in Python/Java/Scala/go for test automation.
Hands-on experience with API testing tools (e.g., Postman or similar) for distributed systems
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and test execution in Jenkins or similar environments such as jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, etc
Hands-on experience building and maintaining automated test frameworks (e.g., pytest, JUnit, TestNG, etc.)
Experience in working with databases for backend validation.
Experience with cloud and container technologies (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, etc.)
Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, etc.) for validating service health
Strong understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC) and agile methodologies.
Excellent problem-solving skills and excellent communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience testing machine learning systems, such as recommendation systems, search ranking systems, or other probabilistic ML application systems.
Experience creating synthetic or seeded test data to simulate realistic customer/account behaviors.
Experience evaluating model outputs using statistical techniques, distribution analysis, or scenario-based validation, rather than deterministic assertions.
Knowledge of data pipelines, feature stores, inference systems or model-serving infrastructure (Seldon, KServe, Ray Serve, etc.) is a plus.
Experience testing online services with high RPS and low latency requirements
Experience with performance and load testing tools (Locust, k6, Gatling, JMeter, etc.)
Experience with Databricks or similar ML platform tooling

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain automated test frameworks, test scripts for ML inference services and related ML platform components using python/Java
Build and automate realistic, representative test account creations and datasets to evaluate model behavior across different scenarios
Validate score distributions, ranking behavior, output quality, and other model signals for incoming ML models prior to release
Perform different types of testing, including functional, integration, regression and API testing working with RESTful APIs, microservices and databases, and non-functional performance and load testing to verify inference service scalability, latency requirements and reliability under production like conditions
Work closely with ML engineers and ops teams to ensure that all features and bug fixes come with automated test coverage, ensuring continuous integration and deployment
Debug and analyze test failures, model anomalies and report defects
Drive high standards of quality for both engineering decisions and customer-facing features with optimal test and automation strategy
Develop and implement best practices for test automation that is highly scalable and maintainable
Monitor test execution and optimize performance in test environments
Come up with innovative solutions to organizational problems