Software QA Engineer

Your Day to Day

• Monitor and test firmware and low-level software development throughout the SDLC, verifying releases meet quality standards.
• Design, implement, and maintain test strategies for embedded systems and connected-device workflows.
• Validate firmware behavior on physical machines and test hardware, including sensors, dispensing mechanisms, and connectivity modules.
• Test over-the-air (OTA) firmware update flows for reliability, rollback safety, and fleet-wide rollout.
• Characterize firmware behavior under soak and stress testing to catch memory leaks, timing issues, and intermittent failures.
• Prevent bugs during development by improving the overall development process.
• Collaborate with firmware, software, and hardware engineers to identify and resolve defects.
• Track and document test procedures and findings in a bug tracking system; participate in design review meetings.
• Contribute to release sign-off and define quality gates for new releases.
• Explore and adopt AI-powered testing tools for test generation, self-healing automation, and anomaly detection.
• Debug firmware issues using debuggers, serial consoles, and logic analyzers.
• Develop tests for firmware communication interfaces (UART, I2C, USB, Wi-Fi), including fault injection and boundary conditions.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree (or international equivalent) and 2+ years of relevant experience in QA or test engineering, ideally spanning embedded/firmware and software systems.
• Hands-on experience testing embedded systems (C/C++, RTOS environments, serial or wireless communication protocols).
• Understanding of IoT or connected-device architectures, including cloud-to-device communication.
• Experience with bug tracking and test management tools (e.g., Jira).
• Comfort working directly with physical hardware and lab equipment.
• Understanding of embedded C/C++ to review firmware changes and write test cases.
• Familiarity with hardware debugging tools (multimeters, logic analyzers, J-Link debuggers, serial terminals).
• Understanding of common embedded failure modes.
• Scripting ability for test automation and CI/CD tooling (a plus).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Able and willing to work onsite at our Boston office 2–3 days per week.

Additional Skills

• Experience with hardware test rigs, oscilloscopes, or protocol analyzers.
• Background in IoT, appliances, or connected-hardware products.
• Familiarity with pytest-based embedded test frameworks or firmware simulation/emulation.
• Exposure to bootloaders, OTA/DFU update mechanisms, or firmware release processes.
• Exposure to cloud infrastructure (AWS) and infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Experience building custom test fixtures or HIL test rigs.
• Experience with JIRA and/or Confluence.
• Experience with specific AI testing/code review tools.