Senior Software Development Engineer in Test - Verification And Validation

Zoox is on an ambitious journey to develop a full-stack autonomous mobility solution for cities and safely deploy such a robotaxi solution. The System Design and Mission Assurance (SDMA) team plays a foundational role in the company's success, responsible for constructing the safety case and fail-operational design for our autonomous driving robots before public road deployment.

We are seeking a highly motivated V&V software development engineer in test (SDET) to join this systems-engineering department. As a V&V SDET, you will be a technical lead, owning the end-to-end validation strategy for critical safety systems while architecting and implementing the advanced software infrastructure required to verify them. This role is coding-intensive, focused on building solutions for high-fidelity testing, scalable automation frameworks, and sophisticated data analysis tools to ensure successful compliance to requirements and mission success.

Some examples of tools this role supports:

• Framework for event definition, orchestration, and verification
• High-performance C++ and Python-based emulators for vehicle sensors (e.g., Radar, Lidar, and Inertial Measurement Units) to enable realistic, real-time fault injection
• Robust communication bridges between simulation environments and physical vehicle hardware
• Automating test management and reporting within lifecycle management tools, e.g. Polarion, JAMA, DOORS.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the design and maintenance of large-scale event-driven software/hardware -in-the-loop (SIL/HIL) testing frameworks, utilizing advanced software patterns to improve modularity and reduce code duplication.
• Architect and manage end-to-end continuous integration (CI) pipelines to automate the execution of regression suites.
• Lead root cause analysis for complex system-level failures, developing log mining scripts and visualization dashboards (e.g., Grafana, SQL-based notebooks) to triage failures and track performance metrics.
• Perform gap analyses between high-level safety requirements and technical test implementations, including the development of intricate timing and prioritization patterns.Lead end-to-end validation and clearance process for safety-critical monitors, such as for collision detection systems.

Qualifications:

• Good technical communication skills, with the ability to summarize complex test failures and provide clear impact assessments for our tests, tools, and pipelines.
• Demonstrated experience delivering complex projects in Python, including the use of AI-based coding, such as for infrastructure development, tooling and automated test writing.
• Deep understanding of HIL and SIL methodologies, including real-time fault injection
• Ownership from design, to implementation and maintenance of automated testing pipelines (e.g., using Bamboo, Jenkins, or similar) and developing custom automation plugins.
• Practical knowledge of Linux internals and networking protocols used in high-throughput real-time systems.
• Bachelors or higher degree in Mechatronics Engineering, Computer Science or a relevant technical field, such as Data Science or Electrical Engineering.

  7+ of experience in the above, with demonstrated ownership of 3+ complex projects

Bonus Qualifications:

• Strong C++
• Pytest customization experience
• Background in autonomous systems or safety-critical robotics validation.
• Experience applying Generative AI or Machine Learning tools to code, audit and improve test coverage and documentation.
• Experience with data engineering tools like SQL, pyspark, Looker or
• Databricks for large-scale performance analysis.
• Experience with real-time communication protocols (e.g., DDS, I2C, SPI, CAN, GMSL2).