Software Engineer - System Test Automation

In this role, you will serve as a key technical leader and force multiplier for our established, high-performing Software Quality team. Your deep passion for software quality will drive meaningful improvements: introducing effective processes, tools, and technologies; mentoring engineers to strengthen their test design and automation skills; and guiding the team's progression from primarily functional testing to addressing sophisticated challenges such as race conditions, scalability, stability, and performance in distributed systems., * Own and drive end-to-end system test strategy across the product, in partnership with other system test engineers clearly defining scope, priorities, and coverage goals aligned to customer workflows and risk areas.

• Significantly increase system-level test coverage by identifying gaps in critical user journeys, failure modes, and distributed workflows; continuously evolve the suite with customer-like and production-inspired scenarios.
• Design and implement scalable, efficient regression frameworks that enable maximum coverage in minimum time, with a strong focus on parallelization, smart test selection, and continuous execution in CI/CD.
• Continuously validate product behavior through ongoing regression not just at release time ensuring fast feedback loops and early detection of systemic issues.
• Lead non-functional system validation efforts including large-scale performance, race conditions, endurance, failover/recovery, and reliability in distributed hybrid cloud environments.
• Collaborate closely with developers and architects to design testable systems, define validation strategies for complex features, and embed quality early in the development lifecycle (shift-left).
• Establish and evolve modern system testing practices (e.g., scenario-based testing, chaos/fault injection, workload modeling, AI-assisted test generation) aligned with product needs and team strengths.
• Drive root-cause analysis and closure for system-level issues by analyzing test signals, identifying systemic gaps, and ensuring timely resolution with clear ownership.
• Own test environments and infrastructure strategy to enable reliable, scalable, and production-like system validation, including CI/CD integration and efficient lab utilization.
• Mentor and provide technical leadership to system/SDET engineers raising the bar on system thinking, test design quality, automation discipline, and execution rigor.
• Measure and report effectiveness of system testing using clear metrics (coverage, execution time, failure detection efficiency, flake rate), and continuously improve based on data.

Must Have's:

• Proven experience in system-level testing and automation, with a strong track record of building scalable, maintainable test frameworks and delivering high-quality validation.

• Significantly expand system-level coverage by identifying gaps in critical workflows, failure modes, and distributed scenarios; continuously add customer-like and production-inspired use cases.

• Design highly efficient regression systems that maximize coverage with minimal execution time using parallelization, smart test selection, and continuous CI/CD execution.

• Strong expertise in test design and automation, including scripting in Python/Ruby/Perl (or equivalent) and building robust, reusable frameworks.

• Continuously validate system health through ongoing regression (not just release cycles), ensuring rapid feedback and early detection of systemic issues.

• Deep technical foundation in distributed systems, including:

• REST APIs, HTTP, networking

• Linux, containers

• AWS APIs

• NoSQL (e.g., Cassandra)

• Lead non-functional system validation covering:

• Performance at scale

• Concurrency / race conditions

• Reliability, failover, and recovery

• Stability in distributed hybrid environments

• Collaborate closely with developers and architects to drive testability, embed quality early (shift-left), and validate complex feature interactions.

• Drive root-cause analysis and closure of system-level issues using strong diagnostic skills and data-driven insights.

• Own and evolve test infrastructure and environments (labs, CI/CD integration) to enable reliable, scalable, and production-like validation.

• Apply AI/GenAI in day-to-day quality engineering workflows (test generation, analysis, data orchestration, productivity improvements).

• Experience with Agile, TDD, and continuous integration practices, ensuring tight alignment with development velocity.

• Mentor and elevate engineers by improving system thinking, test design quality, automation rigor, and execution discipline.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience testing enterprise-scale storage systems or similarly complex distributed platforms.
• Demonstrated success in non-functional testing domains (large-scale performance, reliability, concurrency issues).
• Hands-on experience with scenario-based testing, workload modeling, and failure injection/chaos testing.
• Proven ability to drive process improvements that increase coverage, reduce regression time, and improve release confidence.
• Track record of leading cross-team quality initiatives and raising overall QA/SDET effectiveness.

Education & Experience:

• A minimum of 10 years of experience is required. 10 to 15 years of experience is preferred.
• A Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering or Computer Science, or a Master Degree; or equivalent experience is required.
• Demonstrated ability to have completed multiple, complex technical tasks.

NetApp is pioneering the development of StorageGRID object storage - AWS cloud compatible software powering the exponential growth in AI data lakes. As a Software Developer Engineer in Test, this is your chance to work alongside a group of talented developers, impart your vision, and rapidly launch the latest cloud storage software. Your incredible testing and automation skills will create opportunities to contribute clean code. Naturally, you are as comfortable solving our customer's AI data lake challenges by writing new code as you are improving productivity by refactoring. You are opinionated while flexible and know when to adopt new technologies. We are true believers of Agile development and have been on the journey for many years. Since you maintain supreme levels of communication with your peers, we won't inundate you with process and documentation as you work in our flexible hybrid work-from-home/office model. Throughout the world, leading organizations count on NetApp to manage and store their data. From the edge of human endurance in Formula One auto racing to the edge of the universe with CERN's Large Hadron Collider, we help our customers do things they couldn't before-at speeds you never thought possible.