Sr. Staff Software Development Engineer in Test, Cloud Firewall

Today, there's more data and users outside the enterprise than inside, causing the network perimeter as we know it to dissolve. We realized a new perimeter was needed, one that is built in the cloud and follows and protects data wherever it goes, so we started Netskope to redefine Cloud, Network and Data Security.

Since 2012, we have built the market-leading cloud security company and an award-winning culture powered by hundreds of employees spread across offices in Santa Clara, St. Louis, Bangalore, London, Paris, Melbourne, Taipei, and Tokyo. Our core values are openness, honesty, and transparency, and we purposely developed our open desk layouts and large meeting spaces to support and promote partnerships, collaboration, and teamwork. From catered lunches and office celebrations to employee recognition events and social professional groups such as the Awesome Women of Netskope (AWON), we strive to keep work fun, supportive and interactive. Visit us at Netskope Careers. Please follow us on LinkedIn and .

Role Overview

As a Senior Staff SDET – Cloud Firewall, you will lead the design, automation, and validation of large-scale, distributed firewall and network security systems deployed across global cloud data planes.

You will work closely with Development, Platform Engineering, and Operations to ensure high-quality releases, exceptional scale performance, and enterprise-grade reliability across IPSec, GRE, and Cloud-Firwall traffic handling paths.

This role demands deep technical expertise in networking, distributed systems, and automation frameworks, coupled with a strategic mindset to shape the overall QE direction for Cloud-Firewall services.

Key Responsibilities

• QE Architecture & Strategy

Define and evolve the end-to-end testing strategy for Cloud Firewall — functional, performance, scalability, and resilience.

Partner with Architects and Principal Engineers to design testable systems, ensuring automation and observability are built into the product from inception.

Establish technical vision for CFW QE automation frameworks, ensuring scalability and reliability across multiple data planes (Commercial, PRC, Fed, Gov).

• Automation Framework Ownership

Design and maintain advanced Python-based automation frameworks (Pytest / REST / gRPC) for end-to-end and service-level validation.

Integrate with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab, StackStorm) to enable continuous validation of nightly builds.

Drive coverage automation for policy, steering, routing, and enforcement layers — ensuring deterministic test outcomes.

• Performance, Scale & Reliability Testing

Own large-scale benchmarking of CFW features (throughput, CPS, PPS, latency, connection reuse, and failover).

Use traffic tools such as TRex (ASTF/STL), Ixia BreakingPoint, Keysight CyPerf to model real-world workloads (IMIX, VoIP, HTTP/2, QUIC).

Collaborate with VPP / DPDK performance teams to identify and resolve bottlenecks in datapath processing, queue pinning, and NUMA alignment.

• System Integration & Cross-Domain Testing

Validate CFW integration with IPSec, GRE, DNS, and Steering services, ensuring seamless policy enforcement and routing continuity.

Ensure compatibility across multi-tenant, multi-region data planes (AWS, GCP, Azure).

Lead complex fault-injection and chaos scenarios to validate recovery, redundancy, and failover logic.

• Mentorship & Cross-Functional Leadership

Mentor other SDETs and QEs, reviewing code, frameworks, and test designs.

Collaborate closely with Dev, SRE, and OPS teams to drive rollout readiness, regression stability, and post-deployment validation.

Represent QE in architecture and production rollout reviews, ensuring test insights influence release criteria.

• Observability & Quality Insights

Define quality metrics (pass rate trends, code coverage, CPS vs Gbps scaling curves).

Integrate telemetry dashboards (Grafana, Prometheus, ELK) to correlate test data with system KPIs.

Lead data-driven release readiness assessments for Cloud Firewall milestones.

Required Skills & Experience

• Strong understanding of networking (L2–L7), including routing, NAT, IPSec, GRE, DNS, and VPP/DPDK pipeline concepts
• Hands-on experience with Python (Pytest) and Shell scripting for test automation
• Proficient with traffic tools like TRex (ASTF/STL), CyPerf, Ixia BreakingPoint, Scapy, or tcpreplay
• Exposure to cloud environments (GCP / AWS / Azure), Kubernetes, and containerized deployments
• Expertise in automation frameworks (Jenkins, Git, StackStorm, REST/gRPC API validation)
• Strong Linux debugging skills — tcpdump, Wireshark, perf, flamegraphs, and system profiling
• Familiar with CI/CD pipelines, test orchestration, and scalable automation design
• Good understanding of performance & scale testing (throughput, CPS, PPS, latency)
• Excellent cross-functional communication, collaboration, and mentoring capabilities
• 10–15 years of experience in QE/SDET roles within networking, cloud firewall, or DNS security domains

Preferred Qualifications

• 10–15 years of experience in Quality Engineering / SDET roles for networking or security products.
• Proven track record in scale/performance validation of cloud firewalls, proxies, or virtual gateways.
• Exposure to VPP, DPDK, SR-IOV, NUMA optimization, and micro-service architectures.
• Experience driving automation strategy across multi-region or cloud-native data plane services.

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