Staff Software QA Engineer

Smart Wires • Durham, NC

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

Smart Wires provides advanced power flow control solutions and analytics that enable controllable power systems. This gives grid operators more control over where power flows and helps them use their existing networks more efficiently. Our solutions support system reliability, reduce congestion, and make it easier to integrate new load and generation while minimizing costs and community disruption. We collaborate with customers to achieve their strategic objectives and help them face an uncertain energy future with flexible, high-impact solutions. Smart Wires is currently looking for a Staff SQA (Software Quality Assurance) Engineer based in Durham, NC, to lead our SQA team. The Staff SQA engineer will be the highest technical expert regarding SQA and will lead a team of engineers that are responsible for testing all Smart Wires software and firmware. The Staff SQA Engineer will report to the Head of Controls & Communication engineering, work cross-functionally with peers in the controls & communication group, product management, test engineering, and others to build Smart Wire’s next generation of products and maintain our existing products.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Computer, Software, or Systems Engineering or related field
• 10 years of experience with SQA testing of complex embedded system products.
• 5+ years of experience with test automation platforms (LabVIEW preferred)
• 3+ years of experience with software/firmware development using C, C++, C#, test scripts using Python & lab view graphical language etc.
• 3+ years of people management, which include coaching & mentoring.
• 3+ years of experience collaborating with offshore teams.
• 2+ years of experience managing software process improvement for a 30+ software SQA group.
• 3+ years of related experience with the electric-power, medical or other mission-critical industry
• 2 years of experience with cybersecurity testing.
• Well versed with CI/CD tools, version control systems, bug tracking system (Jira is preferred), and able to design continuous verification and test infrastructure that scales to the code volume of an AI-assisted pipeline rather than a nightly batch build.
• Working knowledge of LLM-based development tooling and hands-on experience building or running evaluation harnesses to validate AI-generated code and tests

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in electrical, Computer, Software, or Systems Engineering or technically related field
• Demonstrated proficiency is a systems-based approach to problem solving.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Ability to work with various internal and external technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills
• Excellent attention to details
• Experience with the electric-power industry
• Experience with supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and plant automation.
• Strong organization and documentation abilities
• Self-motivated and willing to take initiative.
• Thrives working in a fast-paced environment among a multi-disciplinary team.

Responsibilities

• Define, own & implement the SQA strategy for embedded firmware, RTOS- based systems, hardware/software integration, and desktop application software. This includes cybersecurity & SCADA integration.
• Develop and maintain firmware & software quality plans, test strategies (integration, regression, functional, boundary, fault injection and stress test) and entry/exit criteria aligned.
• Lead release readiness reviews to determine whether packages are ready for release.
• Lead the development and continuous improvement of the software test life cycle processes.
• Establish and maintain traceability between system requirements, software requirements, test cases, and defects, including the provenance of AI-generated artifacts (the model and prompt version that produced them) and a defined approach to the reproducibility of non-deterministic outputs.
• Define, track and share software quality KPIs, including metrics specific to AI-generated code such as defect escape rate, rework rate, and the share of changes auto-verified versus manually reviewed.
• Manage the offshore SQA team.
• Coordinate with the Software Manager and Product Manager to plan the firmware/software releases for various projects.
• Manage the SQA lab at Smart Wires HQ.
• Establish and maintain Smart Wires HQ as the production center for software and firmware.
• Automate firmware deployment and testing in SmartValve hardware prior to test execution.
• Work with the Test team with regards to the common development elements of the factory test setups.
• Collaborate closely with firmware & software development engineers to review designs, identify testability gaps, and drive design for test improvements early in the development cycle.
• Author and maintain unit and automation test suites to accelerate test case generation, scenario coverage analysis, and defect pattern identification.
• Champion enterprise AI adoption within the SQA team and own the verification strategy for AI-generated firmware and software: define the independent test cycles, acceptance thresholds, and human-in-the-loop review gates that determine which machine-generated artifacts can be trusted for release.
• Establish verification methods targeting the failure modes specific to AI-generated code — plausible-but-incorrect logic, hallucinated interfaces or dependencies, and silently dropped edge cases — that conventional regression suites do not reliably catch.
• Ensure test cycles are defined independently of the code under test so that AI-authored tests cannot merely confirm AI-authored behavior.
• Extend the cybersecurity test scope to the AI development pipeline itself, including prompt injection, insecure-by-default generated code, and dependency-confusion risk from hallucinated packages.
• Conduct RCA and CAPA processes for escaped software defects and systemic process failures.
• Maintain quality records and artifacts in support of internal audits and external customer or regulatory assessments.
• Mentor mid-level and junior SQA engineers; establish and communicate best practices and quality engineering standards.
• Partner with the requirements team on requirement decomposition and verification planning from concept through validation.

Benefits

• Flexible PTO
• Paid parental leave to support you and your family.
• Competitive total compensation packages that includes salary, bonus and equity.
• A comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, life and disability coverage, and a 401(k) retirement plan with company match.

What This Job Offers

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