Staff Embedded Test Engineer

BrightAI•Palo Alto, CA

About The Position

We are seeking an experienced Staff Embedded Test Engineer with 10+ years of experience specializing in Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems. In this role, you will validate the end-to-end connectivity, functionality, security, and reliability of our smart devices, bridging the gap between physical hardware, edge firmware, and cloud platforms. You will design automated edge-to-cloud test setups, simulate necessary test environments, and ensure flawless wireless communication under real-world conditions.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in embedded systems QA, with at least 5 years focused specifically on connected IoT products.
Proven track record of testing and deploying commercially successful smart home, industrial IoT (IIoT), or wearable devices.
Advanced knowledge of messaging protocols (MQTT, CoAP, HTTPS) and wireless stacks (Wi-Fi, BLE, NB-IoT).
Python and solid understanding of C/C++.
Practical testing experience with major IoT cloud suites (e.g., AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, or Google Cloud IoT).
Mastery of Wireshark, logic analyzers, digital multimeters, and specialized RF network analyzers/attenuators.
Deep familiarity with IoT-focused operating systems like Zephyr RTOS, FreeRTOS, Embedded Linux, or Mbed OS.

Responsibilities

Design test strategies covering the entire IoT data path from physical sensors to cloud databases and user applications.
Set up test benches to simulate varying network conditions, packet loss, high latency, and intermittent connectivity.
Conduct fleet-scale simulation to evaluate how cloud infrastructure handles concurrent data bursts from thousands of edge nodes.
Build and maintain automated HIL test rigs for continuous testing of connected products.
Automate verification of cloud APIs.
Embed automated hardware connectivity tests directly into GitLab CI/CD delivery pipelines.
Validate wireless performance across protocols like BLE, Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, and Cellular.
Intercept and analyze network traffic using Wireshark to verify MQTT, CoAP, HTTP, and Protobuf payloads.
Measure microampere battery consumption during active transmission, sleep states, and deep sleep modes to verify battery-life targets.
Conduct vulnerability testing, including firmware reverse engineering resistance, secure boot verification, and certificate rotation.
Ensure all data-at-rest and data-in-transit utilizes appropriate TLS, AES, or ECC encryption standards.
Rigorously test Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware update mechanisms against power interruptions, corrupted payloads, and rollbacks.