Software Development Engineer in Test (Emerging Career)

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About the job

The Data Acceleration team ensures SAS analytics run faster and more securely by harnessing DBMS pushdown, parallelism, open file formats, and in- or near-database execution. We build the underlying engines that power Viya's performance and scalability - including support for Parquet, cloud object storage, and high-throughput data movement. We collaborate deeply with Advanced Analytics, Visual Analytics, and platform teams to keep Viya competitive, fast, and reliable for our customers.

As a Software Development Engineer in Test (Emerging Career), you will help engineer quality at every layer of the software development lifecycle. You'll build reliable test automation, protect customers from escaped defects, and help maintain a healthy continuous delivery pipeline. You will also collaborate across development, product, operations, and support teams to make quality a core design principle - especially as we deliver performance-critical features for Data Acceleration.

This role combines hands-on test development with engineering judgment, metrics-driven decision making, and a deep understanding of CI/CD, cloud environments, and modern quality engineering practices.

As a Software Development Engineer in Test (Emerging Careers), you will:

• Partner with developers to validate technical designs, uncover edge cases, and ensure quality up-front.
• Design, implement, and maintain high-quality automated tests across all layers of the stack, ensuring robust coverage for complex distributed data-processing features both inside and outside the CI/CD pipeline.
• Expand and sustain test coverage for performance-critical Data Acceleration components, including DBMS pushdown and in-database execution, parallel and concurrent compute paths, Parquet/Iceberg and cloud-object-store integrations, and data loading, ingestion, and transformation correctness.
• Produce and analyze quality metrics that highlight application health and guide engineering decisions.
• Promptly triage test failures with precision and accuracy, maintaining the health of our build pipeline and reducing noise for developers.
• Engage in code reviews for product code, test code, and infrastructure-as-code related to testing and automation.
• Protect customers from escaped defects, participate in escalations when needed, and keep Customer Experience (CX) at the forefront of decisions.
• Understand deployment, migration, security, and performance considerations within a modern continuous delivery lifecycle.
• Practice effective techniques for deploying and operating SAS software in multi-cloud environments.
• Embrace curiosity, passion, authenticity and accountability. These are our values and influence everything we do.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• 2+ years of professional software development or test automation experience
• Proficiency in at least one major programming language (Python).
• Demonstrated experience building automated tests or extending test frameworks.
• Solid analytical, debugging, and troubleshooting skills - especially in distributed systems.
• Ability to work independently, prioritize effectively, and communicate technical reasoning clearly.
• Equivalent combination of related education, training and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications.

Additional competencies, knowledge and skills

• Communication: Excellent communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Technology Savvy: Stay current with emerging security threats, vulnerabilities, and industry best practices, applying this knowledge to strengthen our platforms
• Collaboration: Ability to work independently as part of a team while mentoring younger team members
• Experience with SQL and/or database systems; comfortable validating pushdown behavior or query execution.
• Experience with Parquet/Arrow/Iceberg or cloud object stores (Azure Data Lake, S3, GCS).
• Background in performance, concurrency, or load testing.
• Experience with Kubernetes, containers, or cloud-native test environments.
• Familiarity with SAS or Viya platforms is a plus.

Highlights include...

• Comprehensive medical, prescription, dental and vision plans.
• Medical plan options include:

• PPO with low annual deductible and copays.
• HDHP combined with a health savings account with a contribution from SAS (no access to on-site health care center).

• Onsite Health Care Center (HQ) that's free to employees and family members enrolled in the PPO plan. There's a pharmacy too! Not local to HQ? The pharmacy will ship prescriptions for no additional charge!
• An industry-leading 401k plan.
• Tuition Assistance Program and programs and resources to support your development
• Generous time away including vacation time, a variety of paid holidays, and our much-loved U.S. Winter Wellness Break between December 25 and January 1.
• Volunteer Time Off, parental leave and unlimited paid sick days.
• Generous childcare benefits for all full-time employees.

You are welcome here.

At SAS, it's not about fitting into our culture - it's about adding to it. We believe our people make the difference. Our inclusive workforce brings together unique talents and inspires teams to create amazing software that reflects the diversity of our users and customers.