Staff Software Development Engineer in Test

From Fivetran’s founding until now, our mission has remained the same: to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. With Fivetran, customer data arrives in their warehouses, canonical and ready to query, with no engineering or maintenance required. We’re proud that more organizations continue to leverage our technology every day to become truly data-driven.

About the Role

Fivetran is building data pipelines to power the modern data stack for thousands of companies. As we grow, so does the need for high-confidence delivery, platform resilience, and automation that scales with product complexity.

As a Staff SDET, you’ll lead from the front– owning shared automation infrastructure, influencing release quality strategy, and driving initiatives that span teams and systems. This role sits at the intersection of hands-on engineering, architectural leadership, and org-wide quality influence.

You will architect and scale automation utilities/libraries, design and build internal tools that improve developer productivity and test efficiency, and establish testing strategies that ensure high-confidence releases across business-critical systems. You will work cross-functionally across teams and domains to influence quality culture, mentor engineers, and drive initiatives that shape how Fivetran builds and ships software. In addition, this role emphasizes leveraging AI driven solutions to accelerate testing, enhance developer productivity, and improve operational insights, making Fivetran’s quality practices smarter, faster, and more scalable.

This role requires deep technical expertise, architectural foresight, and the ability to scale impact beyond code through systems thinking, tool building, and strategic alignment.

Technologies You’ll Use

• Languages & Frameworks: Java (17+), JUnit, REST Assured, Shell scripting; Python (optional)
• Infrastructure & Tooling: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Bazel, Buildkite
• Cloud & Platform: AWS, GCP, Azure
• Observability & Monitoring: Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog
• CI/CD & Automation: Jenkins, CircleCI, GitHub Actions
• Data & Testing:ELT pipelines, test automation utilities, whitebox testing strategies
• Databases: SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g., Postgres, MongoDB)

What You’ll Do

• Lead the architecture of internal tools, libraries, and utilities for test automation and benchmarking, enabling scalable quality solutions across teams and domains.
• Define and evolve quality strategies covering testability, release readiness, performance, and reliability.
• Drive cross-org quality initiatives to improve execution speed, observability, and feedback loops.
• Identify systemic risks in business-critical systems and implement robust validation strategies.
• Mentor engineers, influence design for testability, and champion best practices across the org.
• Collaborate with engineering and product leaders to align testing priorities with platform and business objectives.

Skills We’re Looking For  

• 8+ years of experience in the software industry with a focus on building test automation frameworks, tools, and infrastructure at scale.
• Experience defining and driving code quality for tests (review processes, efficiency, maintainability).
• Writes critical or common code shared across multiple teams.
• Identifies and designs fixes for critical issues concerning core parts of the product.
• Contributes to and enforces department-wide coding standards.
• Identifies major improvements in product to improve quality and resilience.
• Identifies and fixes performance, scalability, and reliability gaps in tests and test frameworks.
• Defines testing efficiency and reporting strategies.
• Defines guidelines for product releases, including quality gates and readiness criteria.
• Expert in design principles and applying them to test architecture.
• Strong knowledge of OOP (preferably Java) 
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Experience with CI/CD systems (Buildkite, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI), modern build tools (Bazel, Maven, Gradle), and observability platforms (New Relic, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Strong background in infrastructure and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Temporal).
• Strong understanding of data engineering concepts, and large-scale distributed systems.
• Demonstrated ability to drive initiatives across multiple teams and influence business-critical systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to support complex technical discussions.
• Knowledge of ELT pipelines, including testing data integrity, schema evolution, and pipeline reliability.
• Demonstrated ability to incorporate AI techniques to improve test efficiency, defect detection, and productivity.
• Experience evaluating and adopting emerging quality engineering practices (e.g., shift-left testing, chaos engineering, autonomous testing).

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Perks and Benefits

• 100% employer-paid medical insurance *
• Generous paid time-off policy (PTO), plus paid sick time, inclusive parental leave policy, holidays, and volunteer days off
• RSU stock grants*
• Professional development and training opportunities
• Company virtual happy hours, free food, and fun team-building activities
• Monthly cell phone stipend
• Access to an innovative mental health support platform that offers personalized care and resources in areas such as: therapy, coaching, and self-guided mindfulness exercises for all covered employees and their covered dependents.

* May vary by country and worker type - please reach out to your recruiter for more information

Click here to learn more about Fivetran's Benefits by Region.

We’re honored to be valued at over $5.6 billion , but more importantly, we’re proud of our  core values of Get Stuck In, Do the Right Thing, and One Team, One Dream . Read about us in  Forbes .     

Fivetran brings together high-quality talent across the globe to make data access as easy and reliable as electricity for our customers. We value and recognize that our customers benefit from having innovative teams made of people from many backgrounds, experiences, and identities. Fivetran promotes diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging through attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining a diverse workforce, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it helps us build a world-class company to better serve our customers, our people and our communities.

To learn more about Fivetran’s culture and what it’s like to be part of the team, click here and enjoy our video.

To learn more about our candidate privacy policy, you can read our statement here .

We are committed to ensuring that all candidates have an equal opportunity to participate in our interview process. If you require accommodations at any stage of the process due to a disability, medical condition, or any other circumstance, please don't hesitate to submit your request by filling out this form . We will work with you to provide reasonable accommodations to facilitate your participation and ensure a fair and accessible interview experience. Your request and any information provided will be kept confidential and will not impact your candidacy. We look forward to hearing from you and accommodating your needs to the best of our ability.