Software Engineering Director

Posted Yesterday
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San Jose, CA, USA
In-Office
179K-332K Annually
Senior level
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Hardware • Software • Semiconductor
The Role
The Software Engineering Director is responsible for end-to-end product validation, ensuring product reliability and quality before release through various testing and validation strategies.
Summary Generated by Built In
At Cadence, we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to make an impact on the world of technology.

Role Overview
Responsible for end-to-end product validation to ensure the solution works reliably in real customer environments. This role operates downstream of Software Testing and Evaluation, focusing on validating full product behavior, interfaces, configurations, and release readiness.

Key Responsibilities

1. Feature & Regression Validation

  • Validate all product features against specifications for each release candidate
  • Own regression coverage and identify behavioral drift across releases
  • Reproduce, triage, and track customer-reported issues through resolution

2. Interface & UX Validation

  • Test across all user interfaces: TUI, VS Code extension, web UI, and future surfaces
  • Validate workflows, interactions, and usability across platforms (OS, IDEs, terminals)

3. Environment & Configuration Testing

  • Validate across deployment environments: AWS, GCP, and on-prem
  • Ensure functional parity across model providers (e.g., Claude, GPT, Gemini)
  • Test authentication, licensing, and network/proxy configurations
  • Maintain a documented support and validation matrix

4. Customer Environment Replication

  • Build and maintain replicas of key customer environments
  • Run parallel validation across multiple customer profiles
  • Keep environments aligned with evolving customer setups

5. Release Readiness & Gating

  • Define and enforce QA pass/fail criteria for releases
  • Own validation plans, test checklists, and QA sign-off
  • Block releases when quality standards are not met

6. Cross-Team Collaboration

  • Work with Software Testing and Evaluation as downstream validation owner
  • Route defects to the appropriate teams (Engineering, Testing, Evaluation)
  • Feed real-world data back into evaluation frameworks

7. QA Infrastructure & Automation

  • Maintain validation environments, test harnesses, and automation frameworks
  • Drive automation where cost-effective while preserving critical manual coverage
  • Ensure validation processes are documented and reproducible

The annual salary range for California is $178,500 to $331,500. You may also be eligible to receive incentive compensation: bonus, equity, and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure. Please note that the salary range is a guideline and compensation may vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies and work location. Our benefits programs include: paid vacation and paid holidays, 401(k) plan with employer match, employee stock purchase plan, a variety of medical, dental and vision plan options, and more.

We’re doing work that matters. Help us solve what others can’t.

Skills Required

  • Experience in product validation and testing
  • Experience with AWS and GCP environments
  • Strong understanding of user interfaces and usability testing
  • Experience in QA infrastructure and automation frameworks
  • Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams
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The Company
HQ: San Jose, CA
8,216 Employees
Year Founded: 1988

What We Do

Cadence enables electronic systems and semiconductor companies to create the innovative end products that are transforming the way people live, work and play. Cadence® software, hardware and IP are used by customers to deliver products to market faster. The company's Intelligent System Design strategy helps customers develop differentiated products—from chips to boards to intelligent systems—in mobile, consumer, cloud, data center, automotive, aerospace, IoT, industrial and other market segments. Cadence is listed as one of Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For.

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