Senior SDET

smallest.ai; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 3,200,000; Full time

Job summary

smallest.ai in Bengaluru on-site is seeking a Senior QA Automation & Performance Engineer to own end-to-end testing for backend services and APIs. You will design scalable automation frameworks and drive testing across a multi-service, multi-tenant platform.

The role emphasizes performance testing, workload modeling, and collaboration with backend and infra teams to resolve bottlenecks, while integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines. Strong coding skills are required.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in software quality engineering, test automation or SDET roles.
• Strong hands-on experience with functional and performance testing.
• Experience building or extending an automation framework from scratch.
• Experience testing backend APIs, distributed services and end-to-end workflows.
• Exposure to multi-tenant SaaS systems is preferred.
• Hands-on with performance-testing tools such as k6, JMeter, Gatling or Locust.
• Programming or scripting in Python, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript or Go.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD systems.

Responsibilities

• Own functional, integration, end-to-end and performance testing for backend services and APIs.
• Design, build and maintain scalable automation frameworks.
• Automate testing across a multi-service, multi-tenant platform.
• Validate tenant isolation, authentication, permissions and data integrity.
• Design and execute load, stress, scalability and endurance tests.
• Define performance benchmarks and acceptance criteria for latency and throughput.

Skills

Automation framework

Performance testing

API testing

CI/CD integration

Distributed systems

Tools

k6

JMeter

Gatling

Locust

Job description

Senior QA Automation & Performance Engineer

Location: Bengaluru

Employment Type: Full-time, On-site

About Smallest.ai

smallest.ai is building next-generation AI infrastructure and voice technology to power intelligent products at scale. We work across speech, LLMs and real-time AI systems, building products and infrastructure that developers and businesses rely on.

What You’ll Do

• Own functional, integration, end-to-end and performance testing for backend services and APIs.
• Design, build and maintain scalable automation frameworks rather than only adding test cases to an existing framework.
• Automate testing across a multi-service, multi-tenant platform.
• Validate tenant isolation, authentication, permissions, configuration differences, data integrity and concurrent tenant activity.
• Design and execute load, stress, spike, scalability and endurance tests.
• Define performance benchmarks and acceptance criteria for latency, throughput, concurrency, reliability and error rates.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and work with backend and infrastructure engineers to resolve them.
• Test business logic, data flows, asynchronous processes, integrations and complete customer workflows.
• Build reusable test utilities, fixtures, test-data strategies and environment-management capabilities.
• Integrate functional and performance test suites into CI/CD pipelines.
• Analyse failures using logs, metrics and traces, and distinguish product defects from environment or test-framework issues.
• Identify edge cases, regressions, failure scenarios and production risks before release.
• Improve test coverage, quality gates and overall QA processes across the engineering organisation.
• Collaborate effectively with engineers while independently driving testing priorities and execution.

What We’re Looking For

• 4+ years of experience in software quality engineering, test automation or SDET roles.
• Strong hands-on experience with both functional testing and performance testing.
• Demonstrated experience building or significantly extending an automation framework from the ground up.
• Experience testing backend APIs, distributed services and end-to-end workflows.
• Experience working with multi-service architectures; exposure to multi-tenant SaaS systems is strongly preferred.
• Hands-on experience with performance-testing tools such as k6, JMeter, Gatling or Locust.
• Ability to design realistic workload models and analyse latency percentiles, throughput, concurrency, saturation and failure rates.
• Strong programming or scripting skills in at least one language such as Python, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript or Go.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD systems.
• Working knowledge of databases, queues, caching, APIs and asynchronous workflows.
• Familiarity with logs, monitoring and observability tools for troubleshooting test failures and performance bottlenecks.
• Strong understanding of testing fundamentals, SDLC, STLC and defect-management practices.
• Ability to operate as an independent contributor while working closely with multiple engineering teams.
• Strong analytical thinking, attention to detail and clear written and verbal communication.

Good to Have

• Experience in a high-growth or product-led technology startup.
• Experience testing real-time, AI, voice, streaming or other latency-sensitive systems.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker and cloud infrastructure.
• Experience testing WebSockets, streaming APIs or event-driven architectures.
• Experience with security, resilience, failover or chaos testing.
• Experience validating SLA/SLO requirements and production performance metrics.

Why Join smallest.ai

• Build the testing and automation foundation for cutting-edge AI products.
• Work on real-time, large-scale and latency-sensitive systems.
• Own quality engineering across a complex, multi-service platform.
• Work in a high-ownership environment with direct engineering impact.
• Help the organisation ship faster while maintaining reliability and performance.