Senior OTA Validation & Automation Engineer

ALSO.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

One Medical membership

Fertility benefits

Flexible time off

401(k) match

Job summary

ALSO. is building a new generation of EVs with OTA-enabled embedded devices. We’re seeking a Staff Embedded Validation & Tools Engineer to own validation, automation, and operational readiness for firmware updates across our fleet.

You’ll design test plans, build scalable testbeds, and collaborate with firmware, release, QA, and cloud teams to ensure secure, reliable OTA delivery in real-world networks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience validating embedded devices and firmware updates (OTA or similar).
• Strong programming/scripting ability in Python and familiarity with C/C++ for embedded debugging.
• Deep understanding of embedded platforms (embedded Linux and/or RTOS), bootloaders and A/B update models.
• Practical experience building automated test harnesses and integrating tests into CI pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI).
• Experience with hardware debugging tools and workflows (serial/UART, JTAG/SWD, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes).
• Familiarity with OTA protocols (HTTP(S), MQTT, CoAP) and networking/Wi‑Fi.
• Preferred: cloud OTA platforms, secure update practices, or containerization/telemetry tools.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and execute comprehensive OTA validation plans across device families and release types.
• Build, manage, and scale automated testbeds and harnesses (hardware-in-the-loop, emulators) for regression and stress tests.
• Implement automation for end-to-end OTA pipelines using Python, shell, and CI tools.
• Validate update mechanisms and components including bootloader, update agent, and A/B partitions.
• Test update resilience under intermittent networks, high latency, power interruptions and storage constraints.
• Validate security properties: signing/verification, TLS, secure boot, key management.
• Define metrics and instrument devices and cloud backends to measure rollout health.
• Perform root cause analysis on failed updates and drive remediation with firmware/backend teams.
• Maintain device lab hardware and tooling stacks (JTAG, serial, network emulators, power cycling rigs).
• Contribute to OTA process improvements, staging strategies, canary rollouts, and runbooks documentation.

Skills

Python

C/C++

Embedded Linux

Bootloaders

CI pipelines

JTAG/UART

Networking protocols

Debugging

Cloud OTA platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field

Tools

Jenkins

GitLab CI

CircleCI

Docker

QEMU

Wireshark

Job description

ALSO. is building a new generation of EVs with OTA-enabled embedded devices. We’re seeking a Staff Embedded Validation & Tools Engineer to own validation, automation, and operational readiness for firmware updates across our fleet.

You’ll design test plans, build scalable testbeds, and collaborate with firmware, release, QA, and cloud teams to ensure secure, reliable OTA delivery in real-world networks.