Staff Software Engineer in Test, Product Engineering

Natera

4d

About The Position

Natera is seeking a highly technical, hands-on, and high-agency Principal Engineer, Software in Test (SIT) to join their Oncology Comprehensive Genomic Profiling (CGP) Product Engineering team. In this technical leadership role, you will serve as the test architect and lead developer for product integration efforts, ensuring the delivery of robust, on-time solutions across the CGP portfolio. You will act as the technical backbone for validating complex "Pillar" projects, operating across a sophisticated system of interconnected software products and distributed microservices. This requires deep, expert-level mastery of the system from both architectural and functional perspectives. You will translate that dual expertise into tests that reflect real-world complexity end-to-end, from order ingestion through lab execution to patient reporting. The role demands an AI-native mindset, leveraging advanced LLM methodologies to auto-generate test scenarios, analyze system logs, surface anomalies, and continuously optimize the CI/CD pipeline. While this is an individual contributor role, you will operate as a central leader, driving consensus, architectural alignment, and engineering excellence through influence across Engineering, R&D, Commercial, and Clinical teams. You thrive in fluid environments, adapt quickly to change, and chart a clear path forward even amid unknowns.

Requirements

• 12+ years of active software development or test automation engineering experience, with at least 5 years in a senior or lead capacity, and a proven history of deploying automation structures for enterprise-grade distributed systems.
• Expert programming capabilities in backend languages such as Java, Python, or Go, with hands-on experience in modern test automation frameworks including Playwright, and a solid grasp of containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Hands-on technical mastery verifying microservices, REST/gRPC endpoints, and event-driven data hubs utilizing Apache Kafka or AWS SQS/SNS.
• Comprehensive experience utilizing AWS cloud native services (S3, Lambdas, CloudWatch) to track and mock backend infrastructure.
• Prior exposure to highly structured, quality-critical engineering contexts (HealthTech, MedTech, or FinTech). Understanding of FDA design controls, IEC 62304, or HIPAA standards is highly advantageous.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a strictly quantitative discipline.
• High Agency & Technical Initiative: You are a natural builder who thrives in fluid, fast-moving environments. Rather than waiting for predefined test specifications, you inspect code, audit requirements, chart a path forward amid unknowns, and implement frameworks proactively.
• Deep Systems-Level Cognition: You bring expert-level mastery of the system from two dimensions — architectural depth and functional fluency. You can decipher how minor database modifications in upstream services impact report rendering down the line, catching failure modes that only someone who truly knows the system would anticipate.
• Cross-Functional Leadership through Influence: You operate as a central leader without formal authority — driving consensus, alignment, and engineering excellence across Engineering, R&D, Commercial, and Clinical teams through technical credibility, communication, and emotional intelligence.
• User-Centric Validation Ethos: You understand that automated technical verifications are incomplete if the final end product degrades the clinical or laboratory operational experience.

Nice To Haves

• Understanding of FDA design controls, IEC 62304, or HIPAA standards is highly advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Define Integration Test Architecture: Architect and deploy comprehensive, automated system integration testing frameworks that mirror Natera's complex, multi-component service environments.
• Contract-First Validation: Review and validate OpenAPI/Swagger REST specifications and Avro schemas for Kafka topics during the architecture phase to enforce strict communication protocols across microservices.
• Shift Left Testing Initiative: Collaborate with Solution Architects early in the project lifecycle to isolate and address integration discrepancies within the design phase, long before a code freeze occurs.
• AI-Native Framework Engineering: Pioneer the integration of LLMs and generative AI tools within the testing lifecycle to automate the synthesis of test logic from Level 2 (L2) specifications and behavior models (Gherkin syntax).
• Long-Arc Workflow Automation: Author and execute high-fidelity integration test scenarios that traverse 3+ discrete systems across the order to report journey.
• Resilient API & Event Testing: Minimize fragile UI automation by prioritizing asynchronous event verification (Kafka consumers/producers), webhook handlers, and database state checks.
• Staging Guardrail Enforcement: Support environment integrity by validating that intermediate component builds comply with version synchronization matrices (e.g., LIMS and PIPE dependency trees) prior to deployment.
• AI-Driven Root Cause Analysis: Develop and embed log-scraping AI agents into the CI/CD pipeline to analyze multi-service exceptions, rapidly isolating fault vectors within complex distributed networks.
• Cross-Functional Leadership via Influence: Lead and align cross-functional engineering pods, Solution Architects, and Digital Product Managers toward shared quality goals. Drive architectural consensus and testing process adherence through technical credibility, persuasion, and partnership rather than formal reporting lines.
• Technical Mentorship: Train and mentor Senior Software Quality Engineers (SQEs) and Software Engineers in Test across distributed scrum pods, championing systems thinking and advanced software automation practices.
• Chaos Engineering & Resiliency Experiments: Introduce deliberate network latencies, container failures, and boundary conditions to rigorously validate the system's fail-soft and self-healing behaviors.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans for eligible employees and their dependents.
• Free testing for employees and their immediate families.
• Fertility care benefits.
• Pregnancy and baby bonding leave.
• 401k benefits.
• Commuter benefits.
• Generous employee referral program.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal