Staff SDET

Staff SDET (Kubernetes) – Remote Must be a Kubernetes expert—admin/operator level proficiency required. CKA certification is a major plus. We are seeking a Staff Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) who will lead the quality strategy, test architecture, and automation across our Kubernetes-based products and open-source platforms. This is a highly technical role for an experienced engineer who thrives in startup environments and has deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes, test automation frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines. This is not a traditional QA role — it’s a critical technical leadership position focused on ensuring product reliability, scalability, and performance through automation, architecture-level quality thinking, and hands-on collaboration across engineering teams. What You’ll Do - Lead the design, development, and maintenance of robust, scalable automated test frameworks for backend services and UI components. - Define and drive the end-to-end test strategy across services, features, and CI/CD pipelines. - Collaborate with engineering, product, and infrastructure teams to build quality into the product at every phase. - Participate in architecture and design discussions, advocating for testability, observability, and long-term reliability. - Integrate and manage automated test suites into CI/CD systems like GitHub Actions and Argo CD. - Mentor developers and QA engineers in best practices around testing, automation, and quality engineering. - Conduct hands-on exploratory testing to discover edge cases, regressions, and usability issues not easily caught through automation. - Operate effectively across multiple fast-moving, parallel projects within a startup environment. What You Bring - 5+ years of experience in software quality engineering or SDET roles, with 2+ years in a senior or staff capacity. - Deep Kubernetes expertise—you’ve operated and maintained Kubernetes at the admin or operator level. CKA certification is a big plus. - Strong programming skills in Go and optionally JavaScript for test development and automation tooling. - Experience writing and integrating tests within CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Argo CD, etc.). - Strong understanding of distributed systems and modern cloud-native infrastructure. - Strong communication and leadership skills—able to advocate for quality and influence engineering direction. - A high degree of initiative, ownership, and accountability. - Experience and comfort working in early-stage or startup environments with evolving priorities. Preferred Qualifications - Hands-on experience with test orchestration in Kubernetes-based environments. - Experience testing and validating infrastructure-level functionality (e.g., CRDs, controllers, operators). - Background contributing to or maintaining open-source projects—particularly CNCF projects. - Familiarity with Kubernetes virtualization and multi-tenancy use cases. - Track record of mentoring engineers and elevating team quality standards. - Prior experience testing Golang-based distributed systems. Why You’ll Love This Role - Lead the testing strategy for innovative Kubernetes-based developer platforms. - Collaborate with top cloud-native engineers and CNCF contributors. - Contribute to open-source and commercial products used by global enterprises. - Be part of a remote-first, fast-paced startup culture that values autonomy and technical excellence. Get access to real ownership over testing infrastructure and quality culture. If you are a passionate test engineer with deep Kubernetes knowledge and a vision for automation-first quality engineering, we’d love to hear from you.