Senior SDET - Tooling Engineer
POSITION SUMMARY
We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Software Quality Engineer (SDET) to lead our end-to-end quality engineering initiatives across mobile, web, backend, and data platforms. This role combines deep technical expertise with a forward-thinking, AI-first mindset, driving innovation, scalability, and reliability through advanced automation and intelligent testing strategies. As a senior member of the team, you will champion modern, AI-enhanced quality practices and help build a culture where continuous improvement, automation-first thinking, and data-driven decisions are embedded at every stage of product development.
This is a hybrid position in Mountain View (Headquarters) and will require in-office work 2 days a week. The base salary range for this full-time position is $210,000 to $257,000, plus equity and benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. EarnIn provides excellent benefits for our employees, including healthcare, internet/cell phone reimbursement, and a learning and development stipend.
Quality Engineering & Test
Own end-to-end quality across iOS and Android applications and their supporting backend services, ensuring high confidence in weekly (or faster) releases.
Design and implement comprehensive test strategies covering:
Native mobile applications (iOS & Android)
Mobile-to-backend integrations (REST APIs, auth flows, event-driven systems)
Microservices and distributed systems
Critical web workflows that intersect with mobile journeys
Device, OS, browser, and network variability
App lifecycle events, offline behavior, retries, and edge cases
Ensure critical user journeys are validated across mobile UI → API → backend → web touchpoints, preventing production escapes in high-impact flows.
Partner with engineering teams to embed quality gates into the mobile release lifecycle, including pre-merge validation, release candidate verification, and post-deploy smoke testing.
Drive improvements in testability by introducing better logging, API contracts, observability hooks, feature flags, and deterministic state management.
Establish meaningful quality metrics (crash analytics, defect trends, flaky tests, API reliability, release risk scoring) and surface actionable insights to engineering stakeholders.
Champion shift-left quality by influencing design reviews, API schema discussions, and acceptance criteria early in development.
AI-Driven Quality and Automation
Leverage AI to enhance mobile, backend, and web testing effectiveness, including:
AI-assisted test case and test data generation
Intelligent regression suite prioritization based on code changes
Predictive defect detection and risk-based testing
Flaky test detection and automated stabilization insights
Integrate AI-powered log intelligence, crash clustering, and anomaly detection into quality workflows.
Continuously evaluate and experiment with AI-driven QA tools to increase coverage, reduce maintenance overhead, and accelerate release cycles.
Contribute to building an AI-augmented quality ecosystem that improves speed without compromising reliability.
Automation Excellence
Design, build, and scale robust automation frameworks using:
XCUITest, Espresso, Appium (mobile automation)
Playwright (web and mobile web validation)
REST Assured or similar tools for API and service validation
Ensure frameworks are modular, maintainable, and optimized for scale across multiple teams.
Integrate automated validation into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.) to enable:
Pre-merge quality gates
Parallelized execution
Environment-aware test runs
Post-deployment smoke and regression coverage
Build developer-friendly tooling that enables:
Self-service test execution
Real-time reporting and dashboards
Faster debugging and failure triage
Scalable test data and environment management
Continuously reduce flakiness, improve signal quality, and optimize execution time across mobile and backend suites.
Performance, Scalability & Reliability
Design and execute performance validation across:
Mobile app startup time and responsiveness
API latency, throughput, and reliability
Backend load and stress conditions
Web performance for critical flows
Partner with engineering teams to analyze production logs, crash reports, browser telemetry, and service metrics.
Lead root-cause analysis of complex cross-layer defects spanning mobile UI, APIs, backend services, and web surfaces.
Ensure reliability validation is embedded directly into release workflows.
Cross-Functional Collaboration and Leadership
Collaborate closely with mobile engineers, backend developers, web engineers, product managers, DevOps teams, and release managers to define clear, testable requirements and release criteria.
Actively participate in sprint grooming, planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.
Influence best practices around mobile-first design, API contracts, and release readiness.
Support mobile app release activities, including release candidate validation, go/no-go recommendations, and post-release monitoring.
Mentor junior QA engineers and contribute to raising the technical bar in automation and cross-platform validation.
Work effectively with globally distributed teams to coordinate testing across time zones.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
4+ years of experience in web and mobile testing, with a strong emphasis on test automation.
Proven expertise in designing and maintaining scalable test automation frameworks.
Hands-on experience with mobile testing frameworks such as XCUITest (iOS) and Espresso (Android), and web frameworks like Playwright.
Strong understanding of testing across microservices, APIs, and distributed systems.
Ability to analyze and debug complex test failures, automation issues, and defects efficiently.
Familiarity with generative AI applications in quality engineering (test case generation, API contract validation, log intelligence, etc.).
Passion for leveraging AI to reduce manual effort, increase coverage, and accelerate release cycles.
Proven experience supporting weekly release cycles with a mix of manual and automated regression testing.
Strong analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills
Experience using or implementing AI/ML-powered testing tools is a significant plus
Experience collaborating with global teams across multiple time zones.
BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
Nice to Have:
Experience supporting mobile app store release processes (App Store / Play Store), release candidate validation, phased rollouts, and post-release monitoring.
Familiarity with crash reporting tools, release health dashboards, and rollback strategies.
#LI-Hybrid