Staff Embedded Test Engineer

Location: Palo Alto, CA

Department: Engineering

Job Overview

We are seeking an experienced Staff Embedded Test Engineer with 10+ years of experience specializing in Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems. In this role, you will validate the end-to-end connectivity, functionality, security, and reliability of our smart devices, bridging the gap between physical hardware, edge firmware, and cloud platforms. You will design automated edge-tocloud test setups, simulate necessary test environments, and ensure flawless wireless communication under real-world conditions.

Key Responsibilities

IoT Test Strategy & Network Simulation

Edge-to-Cloud Validation: Design test strategies covering the entire IoT data path from physical sensors to cloud databases and user applications.

Network Simulation: Set up test benches to simulate varying network conditions, packet loss, high latency, and intermittent connectivity.

Scale & Stress Testing: Conduct fleet-scale simulation to evaluate how cloud infrastructure handles concurrent data bursts from thousands of edge nodes.

Automation & CI/CD

Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL): Build and maintain automated HIL test rigs for continuous testing of connected products.

API Testing: Automate verification of cloud APIs.

DevOps Integration: Embed automated hardware connectivity tests directly into GitLab CI/CD delivery pipelines.

Wireless, Protocol, & Power Verification

RF & Wireless Testing: Validate wireless performance across protocols like BLE, Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, and Cellular.

Protocol Analysis: Intercept and analyze network traffic using Wireshark to verify MQTT, CoAP, HTTP, and Protobuf payloads.

Power Profiling: Measure microampere battery consumption during active transmission, sleep states, and deep sleep modes to verify battery-life targets.

IoT Security & Resilience

Security Auditing: Conduct vulnerability testing, including firmware reverse engineering resistance, secure boot verification, and certificate rotation.

Encryption Validation: Ensure all data-at-rest and data-in-transit utilizes appropriate TLS, AES, or ECC encryption standards.

OTA Update Validation: Rigorously test Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware update mechanisms against power interruptions, corrupted payloads, and rollbacks.

Required Qualifications & Skills Experience

10+ years of experience in embedded systems QA, with at least 5 years focused specifically on connected IoT products.

Proven track record of testing and deploying commercially successful smart home, industrial IoT (IIoT), or wearable devices.

Technical Skills IoT Protocols:

Advanced knowledge of messaging protocols (MQTT, CoAP, HTTPS) and wireless stacks (Wi-Fi, BLE, NB-IoT).

Languages: Python and solid understanding of C/C++. Cloud Infrastructure: Practical testing experience with major IoT cloud suites (e.g., AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, or Google Cloud IoT).

Network & Hardware Tools: Mastery of Wireshark, logic analyzers, digital multimeters, and specialized RF network analyzers/attenuators.

Embedded OS: Deep familiarity with IoT-focused operating systems like Zephyr RTOS, FreeRTOS, Embedded Linux, or Mbed OS.