Senior Staff Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Job Purpose

About the role

We build AI-powered dubbing and localization technology. Our platform is a complex pipeline of microservices - speech recognition, machine translation, voice synthesis, media processing - that take a video in one language and deliver a fully dubbed version.

We do not have automated testing yet. You will build it from scratch, embedded in the engineering team, starting where it matters most: the end-to-end pipeline in production.

You are an engineer who thinks in systems, designs quality strategies, and uses AI tooling to execute them. You define what good looks like. Agents do the heavy lifting. You decide what ships.

About Product & Technology

Product & Technology plays a pivotal role in aligning the organization with its strategic objectives and enhancing shareholder value. Product & Technology is responsible for establishing unified standards and governance practices throughout the company. Additionally, we oversee the development and maintenance of core applications essential for the seamless operation of various functions across the organization. We are committed to driving and executing future roadmaps that are in line with the overall strategic direction of RWS.

With a global reach, Product & Technology provides support services to over 7500 end users worldwide. We take pride in managing the information security operation and safeguarding all our assets. Our core functions encompass Enterprise & Technical Architecture, Network & Voice, Infrastructure, Service Delivery, Service Operations, Data & Analytics, Security & Quality Compliance, Transformation, Application Development, Enterprise Platforms, With a dedicated team of over 500 staff, Product & Technology ensures a strong presence across all regions, enabling efficient and effective support to our global operations.

Job Overview

What makes this uniquely hard

Our pipeline involves AI models where the same input can produce different outputs. Services communicate asynchronously across multiple boundaries. We integrate external TTS, ASR, and translation providers that can fail or behave unexpectedly. Traditional assertion-based testing does not work here - you need property-based, statistical, and boundary strategies.

And you are starting from zero.

What you will own

• End-to-end automated tests for the dubbing pipeline, covering async flows across service boundaries.
• API and contract testing - verifying services agree on message shapes, error handling, and async behavior.
• Testing strategies for non-deterministic outputs - golden datasets, property-based assertions, regression suites that detect drift after model or provider changes.
• Observability as a quality signal - using tracing, logs, and metrics as active quality gates, not just debugging tools.
• Load and performance testing for the async pipeline.
• Security testing embedded in the process, not bolted on at the end.
• CI/CD quality gates - owning what must pass before code ships.

Must have

• Strong coding skills in at least one scripting or backend language - the framework will be shaped around what fits the system, not a preset choice.
• Experience building automation frameworks from scratch.
• Deep experience with API and integration testing across async, distributed systems.
• Experience with observability tooling used actively as quality signals.
• Experience with load and performance testing for distributed pipelines.
• Experience testing non-deterministic systems - property-based testing, statistical assertions, tolerance-based snapshots.
• Genuine fluency with AI development tooling - agents, MCPs, AI coding assistants as your primary way of working. You define the intent, review the output, own the result.
• Security mindset embedded in how you test, not as a separate activity.

Nice to have

• LLM evaluation techniques - detecting behavioral drift after model or prompt changes.
• Experience with gRPC and contract testing.
• Exposure to speech technologies - TTS, ASR, translation - and how to evaluate their output quality.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes test environments.

How we work

Small, senior team with a high degree of ownership. Engineers write their own stories and shape the product direction. You are expected to identify problems early, contribute to solutions before they are defined, and make the team around you stronger.

Life at RWS

Life at RWS- If you like the idea of working with smart people who are passionate about growing the value of ideas, data and content by making sure organizations are understood, then you’ll love life at RWS.

Our purpose is to unlock global understanding. This means our work fundamentally recognizes the value of every language and culture. So, we celebrate difference, we are inclusive and believe that diversity makes us strong. We want every employee to grow as an individual and excel in their career.

In return, we expect all our people to live by the values that unite us: to partner, putting clients fist and winning together, to pioneer, innovating fearlessly and leading with vision and courage, to progress, aiming high and growing through actions and to deliver, owning the outcome and building trust with our colleagues and clients.

RWS embraces DEI and promotes equal opportunity, we are an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. RWS is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at RWS are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation. RWS will not tolerate discrimination based on any of these characteristics.

RWS Values

Get the 3Ps right - Partner, Pioneer, Progress - and we´ll Deliver together as RWS.

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