Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Location: Redwood City, CA

Our mission is to move humanity off of fossil fuel heating. 20% of US global warming emissions come from homes (that's more than cars!). The largest driver of home emissions is burning fossil fuels for heat. To stop climate change, over 80M US homes need to transition from combustion to efficient, electric heat pumps over the coming decades.

We believe for this to happen the world needs fantastic products that are easy to purchase. Today's heat pumps lack great design, make limited use of software, and are difficult and stressful to adopt. We are building a next generation, beautifully designed, AI optimized home heating and cooling system that is 10x better than what is on the market today.

Quilt is hiring an SDET to build and scale test infrastructure for our heat pump products across embedded systems, cloud services, and mobile platforms. We're looking for someone who sees manual testing as a problem to automate, not a job to do. You'll work alongside a talented embedded and cloud engineering team, building the frameworks, simulators, and CI/CD pipelines that enable fast, confident releases. This is an infrastructure-building role with high leverage—your work will multiply the productivity of the entire engineering team.

We have hardware-in-the-loop test rigs and device simulators already in place. Your job is to expand them, make them easier to use, and drive adoption across the team. You'll also partner closely with embedded engineers to improve code testability—making it very easy for them to write unit and integration tests.

Test Infrastructure & Automation (60%)

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for embedded, cloud, and mobile testing (GitHub Actions, Bazel)
• Extend hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test infrastructure for device commissioning, OTA updates, and telemetry validation
• Develop device simulators and mocks to reduce hardware dependencies in testing
• Automate repetitive manual test scenarios into regression suites (e.g., pairing flows, firmware upgrades, cloud integration)
• Create reusable test fixtures and libraries that make it easy for engineers to write tests
• Debug and eliminate flaky tests; improve CI reliability and speed

Test Infrastructure & Engineering Support (30%)

• Build test fixtures, utilities, and templates that make it easy for embedded engineers to write tests
• Design testable interfaces and mock layers for device features
• Provide C++ test examples (gtest) for common embedded patterns
• Collaborate on architecture decisions to ensure new features can be tested efficiently
• Improve developer experience around writing and running tests locally and in CI
• Document testing patterns and best practices for embedded systems

Quality Validation & Release Support (10%)

• Perform hands-on testing of critical release scenarios (device pairing, OTA, mobile app integration)
• Validate firmware changes with automated and exploratory testing
• Support mobile app testing (iOS/Android) for key user flows
• Triage and reproduce customer-reported issues for engineering teams

• 4-6 years of SDET or test automation experience, ideally with IoT, embedded systems, or hardware products
• Strong Python for test automation (pytest framework highly preferred)
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing or device integration testing
• CI/CD pipeline development and maintenance (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or similar)
• Comfortable with Linux/Unix environments and shell scripting
• Experience influencing engineering practices—you've convinced developers to refactor code for testability
• API testing for REST/gRPC services
• SQL/database testing for telemetry or time-series data validation
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills for complex hardware/software systems
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Self-motivated with ability to work independently and identify infrastructure gaps
• Passion for electrification and home automation
• Strong mission alignment around climate and decarbonization

• Experience testing firmware OTA updates or device provisioning flows
• Understanding of device communication protocols (Modbus, serial, gRPC)
• Experience with device simulators, emulators, or virtual test environments
• Mobile device testing experience (Appium for iOS/Android)
• Basic Docker and containerization knowledge
• Comfortable reading/modifying C++ test code (gtest) when needed
• Bazel build system experience
• Experience with HVAC systems or similar IoT domains
• Embedded Linux or Raspberry Pi test development
• Web E2E automation (Cypress/Playwright) for dashboards
• Knowledge of time-series databases (TimescaleDB/PostgreSQL)

In 3 months:

• You've automated the top 10 manual test scenarios that were blocking releases
• CI/CD pipeline improvements have cut test cycle time by 30%
• You've identified the biggest testability gaps in the embedded codebase

In 6 months:

• Embedded engineers are writing 2x more unit tests because you made it easy
• Device simulator coverage has expanded to cover new product variants
• Regression test suite catches bugs before they reach QA

In 12 months:

• Test infrastructure is robust enough that engineers trust CI results over manual validation
• You've led a major refactor to make a previously untestable subsystem fully testable
• The team is shipping faster with higher confidence because of the test infrastructure you've built

We are a growing team of ambitious people who truly care about the impact of their work. We are on a mission to accelerate a species-level human transition. For over a million years, we've been burning things to stay warm. It's time to move to a better way of living.

At Quilt, we're on a mission to make clean, efficient heating and cooling accessible to everyone—and we know that heat pumps can play a big role in creating healthier, more climate-resilient homes. But the reality is, climate change and outdated energy systems don't impact everyone equally. That's why we're building a diverse, inclusive team—because we believe the best solutions come from people with different lived experiences and perspectives. We welcome teammates of all races, ethnicities, genders, identities, abilities, and backgrounds, and we're committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels empowered to shape the future of climate tech.

This is a full-time, hybrid position working out of our Redwood City office.  Candidates must be able to commute to the office at least 3 days a week. 

We are not able to offer relocation assistance for this role.

The expected base annual salary range for this role is $150,000-$200,000, depending on experience.  In addition to base salary, Quilt also offers meaningful equity and top-tier health benefits.

Don't meet 100% of the requirements? That's okay, apply anyways! If you're excited about this role and think you could bring something unique to the team, we encourage you to apply—even if your experience doesn't match perfectly. We'd love to hear from you.

Need accommodations during the hiring process? No problem—just let us know. We're here to support you. ([email protected])