Sr SDET– Firmware Automation

Company Overview

Lightmatter is leading the revolution in AI data center infrastructure, enabling the next giant leaps in human progress. The company invented the world’s first 3D-stacked photonics engine, Passage™, capable of connecting thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light in extreme-scale data centers for the most advanced AI and HPC workloads.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and roadmap of the firmware test automation framework across products, targets, sites, and teams.
• Design and build stable automation for new firmware features and hardware, held to production-quality engineering standards.
• Build and operate HIL test infrastructure: bench and rack fixtures, device farms, power/reset control, instrument integration, and CI orchestration on real photonic hardware.
• Define test strategy, plans, and reporting; lead test plan reviews across teams.
• Integrate firmware testing into CI/CD so every change is built, flashed, exercised on hardware, and reported automatically.
• Own framework reliability and flaky test metrics as first-class engineering problems.
• Build results, telemetry, and log pipelines for triage, trend analysis, and release decisions.
• Debug failures across the full stack (firmware, board, instrument, fixture, test code) and partner with engineers to resolve them.
• Participate in firmware design reviews to influence testability and diagnostics early.
• Integrate with data center management interfaces (CMIS, OpenBMC, DMTF); debug embedded systems using GDB, JTAG, and logic analyzers.
• Define diagnostics and monitoring architecture for photonic transceivers.
• Mentor engineers on test architecture and write clear documentation for non-specialists.

Qualifications

• Must have extensive experience with hardware-level automation (embedded systems, bench setups, physical devices) amid frequent hardware revision.
• 8+ years of professional software development, primarily on embedded products, including designing test frameworks and infrastructure.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• At least one automation framework or HIL system architected and built from scratch, adopted by other engineers, and in daily use.
• Strong Python: fixture and abstraction layers, hardware drivers, plugin/configuration architectures.
• Working fluency in embedded C/C++: able to read firmware drivers or state machines and write tests for edge cases.
• Experience owning CI/CD pipelines running tests on physical hardware (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or equivalent), including runner health, hardware allocation, and recovery.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD, or MS with 8+ years in embedded test automation or firmware development.
• Experience testing firmware for optical transceivers, photonic systems, or precision analog/mixed-signal hardware.
• Familiarity with CMIS, OpenBMC, or DMTF/Redfish.
• Experience with Pytest ecosystem and test tooling for Zephyr or FreeRTOS (Twister, ztest, Renode, QEMU, or similar).
• Experience with optical and electrical test and measurement equipment.
• Startup experience.
• Thoughtful use of AI-assisted tools in test generation, triage, or analytics.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision).
• Retirement Savings Matching Program.
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D).
• Generous Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays).
• Paid Family Leave.
• Short Term & Long Term Disability.
• Training & Development.
• Commuter Benefits.
• Flexible, hybrid workplace model.
• Equity grants (applicable to full-time employees).