Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Zefr; California; Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Life insurance

Parental leave

401(k) with company match

Professional development

13 paid holidays

Hybrid/remote options

Office lunches

In‑office snacks

In‑person/virtual events

Job summary

Zefr is hiring a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to own quality across APIs, web apps, data pipelines, and AI-driven services. You will write test plans, build automated tests, and gate each release.

You will also monitor production and improve test reliability across multiple platforms, including data and AI components. The role emphasizes software-aspect testing, collaboration with product engineers, data scientists, and cross‑functional teams, with in‑office, hybrid, and

Qualifications

• 1–3 years experience as QA engineer or SDET.
• Solid coding skills for test automation (Python preferred).
• Experience automating API tests with schema checks and negatives.

Responsibilities

• Plan test coverage for each feature including happy paths and edge cases.
• Build and maintain automated tests for REST/GraphQL APIs, UI, and partner APIs.
• Validate data pipelines, data quality, and SLAs.
• Test AI/ML features and shadow deployments before rollout.
• Keep tests in CI/CD and gate merges/deploys.
• Validate releases in preview, staging and production.
• Monitor production quality with synthetic checks and alerts.
• Investigate issues and write clear bug reports.

Skills

Test automation

Python

Java

TypeScript

Go

API testing

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

SQL

Git

CI/CD

Debugging

Test design

Communication

Tools

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

SQL

Git

Job description

What we do:

Zefr is the leader in AI-powered content classifications for brands and advertisers. Zefr’s platform is purpose built for multi-modal content understanding on open platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Meta and Snap, with pre-bid activation and verification solutions. Our products safeguard media and AI investments, while maximizing performance and efficacy on those channels.

Headquartered in Los Angeles with global offices across New York, Chicago, London, Toronto, Singapore, and more, Zefr is redefining what trust and transparency means for social media in the age of AI.

What you'll do:

We're hiring a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) with 1–3 years of experience to help own quality across our APIs, web apps, data pipelines and AI-powered services, mainly by writing code rather than running manual test scripts.

You'll work inside product engineering teams. You'll decide what to test and how, build and maintain automated tests in a shared framework, and make sure those tests gate every release. You'll also watch production through monitors and alerts.

This role suits an engineer who treats testing as a software problem and enjoys finding where systems break. That includes data and model outputs, not only screens and endpoints.

• Plan testing for each feature. Join grooming, ask clarifying questions, and write test plans that cover happy paths, edge cases and negative cases.

• Build and maintain test automation for REST and GraphQL APIs, backend services, web UIs and third-party partner APIs, in a shared code-based framework. Review teammates' test code.

• Validate data pipelines and data quality. Write checks on pipeline outputs (schemas, row counts, freshness, business rules) and help define data SLAs.

• Test AI and ML features. Compare model or prompt versions on fixed datasets, validate shadow deployments before rollout, and test AI agents and their tools (such as MCP servers) for correct behavior, input validation and error handling.

• Keep tests running in CI/CD. Wire suites into pipelines so they gate merges and deploys. Keep them fast and reliable by triaging failures, fixing flaky tests and cutting run time.

• Validate releases in preview, staging and production: prepare test data, run regression, sign off, and verify after deploy.

• Monitor production quality. Build synthetic checks, dashboards and alerts that catch regressions and bad data before customers do.

• Investigate issues and incidents. Reproduce problems, find root causes, write clear bug reports and verify fixes. Help out during high‑severity incidents.

• Work across roles with engineers, product managers, data scientists and customer‑facing teams. Turn findings into well‑scoped tickets and share quality status openly.

What you bring:

• 1–3 years of experience, ideally as a QA engineer or SDET, with hands‑on test automation.

• Solid coding skills in at least one language used for test automation. Python is preferred; Java, TypeScript or Go also work.

• Experience automating API tests: request and response validation, schema checks and negative cases.

• Experience with a modern UI end‑to‑end framework such as Playwright, Cypress or Selenium.

• Working SQL. You can query across tables to confirm data is complete and correct.

• Good test design instincts: edge cases, boundary values, negative cases and the test pyramid.

• Comfort with Git, pull requests, code review and running tests in CI/CD pipelines.

• Persistence when debugging: reading logs, inspecting network calls and querying databases.

• Clear written communication: bug reports, test plans and short async status updates.

Nice to have:

None of these are required. If you have some of them, tell us.

• Exposure to a public cloud (GCP, AWS or Azure) and containers.

• Testing data pipelines and orchestration tools (Airflow, dbt, Great Expectations, Elementary) or data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery).

• Testing ML models or LLM‑powered features, including evaluation datasets and handling non‑deterministic outputs.

• Testing AI agents or MCP servers, or using AI coding assistants to speed up test writing and exploratory testing.

• Observability and alerting tools (for example Datadog, Grafana, Cloud Monitoring, PagerDuty) and synthetic monitoring.

• Performance and load testing (k6, Locust, JMeter).

• Experience with ad tech, digital media or large third‑party platform APIs (Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, Snap).

• Frontend knowledge (React) to test framework upgrades and migrations.

• Security basics for test environments, such as managing secrets for test accounts.

Benefits (for US based employees):

• Flexible PTO

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with FSA options

• Company‑paid life insurance

• Paid parental leave

• 401(k) with company match

• Professional development opportunities

• 13 paid holidays off

• Summer Fridays (we leave early)

• In‑office, hybrid, and fully‑remote work options available

• In‑office lunches and lots of free food

• Optional in‑person and virtual events (we like to celebrate!)

Compensation (for US based employees):

The anticipated salary for this position is between $90,000 and $120,000. Within the range, individual pay is determined by factors such as job‑related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

Zefr is an equal opportunity employer that embraces diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives because we know this only makes us better. We strongly encourage women, persons of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, persons with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign‑born residents, and veterans to apply even if you do not meet 100% of the qualifications.