Senior SDET — Modeling & Simulation (Remote/Hybrid)

Digitailor; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Code Metal is seeking a founding Staff Quality Engineer (SDET) for Modeling & Simulation to build a robust automated validation platform. You will design and implement test infrastructure for distributed services and AI-assisted workflows, with deterministic and probabilistic validation approaches.

This hands-on role requires deep Python expertise, Docker-based systems, and strong CI practices. The role combines code, test strategy, and cross-team leadership to establish reusable quality

Qualifications

• Significant experience as an SDET, test-infrastructure engineer, quality architect, or software engineer responsible for automated validation of production systems.
• Strong production programming skills in Python.
• Deep experience building Python test infrastructure using pytest or comparable frameworks, including asynchronous testing, fixtures and factories, parallel execution, and CI integration.
• Demonstrated experience designing risk-based test strategies across multiple layers of a distributed system.
• Experience validating complex systems with partially nondeterministic behavior, such as simulation, statistical models, ML, or AI-assisted workflows, and sound judgment about deterministic checks, reference evidence, statistical evaluation, and human oversight.
• Hands-on experience testing Docker-based or comparable containerized, multi-service applications, including APIs, databases, messaging, authentication, authorization, and data isolation.
• Experience building and improving CI workflows with GitHub Actions or a comparable platform, including test isolation, failure diagnosis, and flaky-test control.
• Ability to set technical direction, write design documents, mentor engineers, and lead multi-team initiatives through influence.

Responsibilities

• Translate Quality Engineering strategy into a risk-based validation approach for Modeling & Simulation across unit, integration, contract, end-to-end, performance, resilience, and security-critical workflows.
• Build reliable test infrastructure, including deterministic fixtures, isolated test data, service and event-contract tests, integration harnesses, versioned reference scenarios, deterministic replay, and focused browser automation for critical user journeys.
• Improve CI feedback through effective test partitioning, parallel execution, caching, failure attribution, and flaky-test control, in partnership with shared platform owners.
• Write behavior-focused tests for high-risk planning, sensing, simulation, authorization, state-transition, and recovery workflows.
• Partner with simulation and model owners to turn intended behavior, assumptions, and known limitations into reusable reference scenarios, regression baselines, characterization or differential tests, and reproducible quality evidence.
• Define validation and release criteria for simulation and emerging AI-assisted workflows, combining deterministic assertions, contracts, reference checks, statistical or model-based evaluation, failure-recovery testing, and appropriate human oversight.

Skills

Python

pytest

Async testing

CI/CD

Docker

GitHub Actions

Distributed systems

Test infrastructure

Mentoring

Design docs

Tools

Playwright

TypeScript

React

Job description

Code Metal is seeking a founding Staff Quality Engineer (SDET) for Modeling & Simulation to build a robust automated validation platform. You will design and implement test infrastructure for distributed services and AI-assisted workflows, with deterministic and probabilistic validation approaches.

This hands-on role requires deep Python expertise, Docker-based systems, and strong CI practices. The role combines code, test strategy, and cross-team leadership to establish reusable quality