Engineering Manager, Software QA

Location:

This position can be based either within commuting distance of our Salem, OR headquarters or remotely in the San Francisco Bay Area.   For remote candidates, regular travel to Salem, typically 1, but sometimes 2 weeks per month will be required. 

About the Role

As the Engineering Manager of Software QA, you will lead the strategy, execution, and evolution of quality assurance for Agility’s robotics software.  You’ll manage and grow a team responsible for validating our humanoid robot platform, ensuring software releases are reliable, performant, and ready for real-world deployment.

This role goes beyond day-to-day testing—you’ll be responsible for building out scalable test methodologies, refining CI/CD pipelines, and embedding a culture of quality into every stage of the development cycle.  You will collaborate closely with software developers, controls engineers, systems engineers, and test teams to ensure rigorous, efficient, and automated validation practices are in place.

This is an ideal role for a technically strong, process-driven leader who can balance speed and stability while scaling QA operations for advanced robotic systems.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Lead, grow, and mentor a team of SW QA engineers focused on end-to-end testing of robotics software, from perception and locomotion to behavior and autonomy.
• Define and execute the QA roadmap for software quality, test infrastructure, and CI/CD strategy as Agility’s robot fleet and software complexity scale.
• Champion a “quality-first” mindset across the engineering organization by setting expectations, driving accountability, and advocating for robust testing at every stage.
  
  

CI/CD & Test Infrastructure

• Refine and evolve Agility’s CI/CD processes, ensuring fast, reliable, and scalable software validation from code commit to release.
• Own the architecture and tooling for test execution, artifact management, regression tracking, and reporting.
• Identify gaps in current test coverage and infrastructure, and lead efforts to develop simulation- and hardware-in-the-loop testing solutions.
  
  

Test Methodology & Automation

• Establish and scale structured test development practices to validate the full robotics software stack, including controls, state estimation, planning, and perception.
• Oversee development of automated test frameworks for both simulation and physical robots, ensuring test cases are meaningful, maintainable, and well-aligned with product goals.
• Ensure repeatability, reliability, and traceability across all validation workflows—manual and automated.
  
  

Execution & Collaboration

• Oversee testing of software releases on both development and production robot platforms, ensuring regressions are caught early and addressed swiftly.
• Partner with Software, Controls, and Systems Engineering teams to triage, reproduce, and resolve high-priority bugs.
• Drive and participate in root cause analysis efforts by guiding deep-dive investigations using logs, telemetry, and test artifacts, partnering closely with integration engineers.
  
  

Process Ownership & Quality Gates

• Define quality gates for software releases, balancing speed with rigor to maintain stability without slowing innovation.
• Develop and enforce processes for bug tracking, prioritization, and resolution, ensuring efficient communication between QA and development.
• Create KPIs to track software quality, test coverage, and release readiness—and use them to drive continuous improvement.
  
  

Reporting & Documentation

• Deliver clear and actionable QA reports summarizing test outcomes, trends, and risks.
• Ensure robust documentation of QA processes, test plans, and tooling to support internal alignment and team scaling.
• Provide regular updates to leadership on software health, risk areas, and resource needs.
  
  

Qualifications

Experience

• 8+ years of industry experience in software QA, systems validation, or test infrastructure, with at least 3 years in a leadership or management role.
• Proven experience testing complex, multidisciplinary systems—robotics, autonomous vehicles, or embedded systems preferred.
• Track record of building, scaling, and managing QA teams in high-growth, fast-paced environments.
  
  

Technical Expertise

• Apply hardware intuition to design optimal testing and interpret results, data, and robot behavior to map observations back to likely root causes in hardware, firmware, or software.
• Strong understanding of robotics hardware—actuators, sensors, embedded systems, and mechanics—and how it affects real-world performance.
• Deep understanding of software QA methodologies, automated test development, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with QA frameworks and tools for robotics, including simulation-based testing (e.g., Gazebo, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo) and real-time validation.
• Proficiency in scripting languages (e.g., Python) and working knowledge of software development workflows (Git, Jenkins, Docker, etc.).
• Familiarity with robotics software architecture, embedded systems, control loops, and perception pipelines.
  
  

Mindset & Skills

• Ownership mindset—takes initiative and drives projects forward without waiting for permission.
• Pragmatic and scrappy—builds processes and tools that solve real problems without unnecessary overhead.
• Excellent communicator—able to translate test results into actionable feedback and influence across disciplines.
• Passion for quality, curiosity for how things work, and resilience in the face of complexity.