QA Engineer
Instrumental
Software Engineering, Quality Assurance
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Posted on Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Instrumental helps the world’s most admired electronics brands build better hardware. Our mission is to drive manufacturing efficiencies through technology that empowers teams to build products better, faster, and with less waste. Brands like Bose, Cisco, and SolarEdge use our technology to optimize their manufacturing processes and deliver superior products in less time.
Our QA engineers partner closely with engineering and product teams to deliver the highest quality software our customers use to make mission-critical decisions about their manufacturing lines. QA engineers are empowered to work closely with stakeholders and customers to build deep empathy for their challenges and work directly with the broader R&D team to convert them into actionable change.
About the Role:
The QA Engineer is responsible for developing test specifications and the methodology that delivers the highest quality experience to Instrumental’s customers. The testing domain spans hardware, our edge computing stack, and our customer-facing web application. The ideal candidate will have experience testing hardware and end-to-end user experience testing in software. You’d be joining our organization as the 2nd member of our QA team – a great opportunity to be part of the early-stage development of this function.
What’s great about this role:
- Make an impact: You’ll work in a fast-paced, iterative environment where you are empowered and expected to participate in fulfilling our company mission to eliminate half of the inefficiencies in manufacturing—a $12T problem.
- Broad technical scope: As a QA engineer, you’ll be exposed to the full gamut of our edge platform tech stack, including hardware, desktop applications, web applications, and ML.
- Cross-functional role: At Instrumental, we believe that the best products are built cross-functionally. You’ll participate in our innovative approach to product development and contribute in each phase.
- Real impact: As a member of our small (and mighty!) team of QA engineers, you’ll directly influence our QA approach and systems.
We’re looking for someone who:
- Demonstrated ability to operate at startup scale; ready to tackle evolving challenges that require incremental and fast-paced innovation
- Proven experience writing and executing test cases that strongly align with the priorities of the project and business
- Minimum 3+ years of QA experience with web and/or mobile applications; bonus if you have experience testing hardware
- Cares deeply about the end-to-end user experience and has demonstrated in a prior role that they will flag issues even when they’re “to spec”
- Demonstrated experience working in a highly cross-functional environment; willingness to participate in product, UX, and engineering design sessions to ensure QA concerns are addressed early
- Strong communication skills and an ability to explain nuanced technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Previous experience working within a Linux environment
- Past experience working with data driven applications including basic SQL and/or scripting capabilities (SQL, shell, Python, etc.)
- Chance to spearhead test automation efforts, enhancing coverage and efficiency. While prior automation experience is a plus, willingness to learn is essential.
- Past experience testing data analysis and visualization software, with proficiency in writing statistical calculations
We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, is supportive of each other, and is highly energized by the opportunity for large impact. We actively work to promote an inclusive environment, valuing passion and the ability to learn. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description!
The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $131,000 - $145,000. In addition, job level & salary opportunity is evaluated through our interview process – we review experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.
Instrumental is very proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits including: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Parental Leave.
This role requires authorization to access information that is subject to U.S. export control restrictions.