Validation Engineer

Job Title – Validation Engineer

Location – Austin, TX

Duration – 12 months contract

Job Description:

You are a pragmatic, self-driven problem‑solver who enjoys digging into firmware and platform behavior, building repeatable tests, and collaborating to close bugs fast. You think in terms of reproducible results and automation, take pride in clear triage artifacts, and communicate effectively with architects, validation engineers, and firmware developers. You are forward-thinking and passionate about AI, with a practical understanding of how to apply autonomous agents and intelligent systems to eliminate traditional QA bottlenecks. We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds who bring curiosity, technical depth, and a commitment to innovation.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Partner with firmware architects and validation teams to define platform‑level test strategies and coverage goals.
• Define and implement platform-level, end-to-end test flows that validate firmware functionality across boot and runtime.
• Design and implement automation‑friendly regression tests and test harnesses that integrate with CI.
• Conduct test execution, debug issues (firmware, platform, infrastructure, automation), and collaborate with developers to drive timely defect resolution.
• Contribute to test strategy and coverage analysis, with emphasis on system-level feature interactions and cross-domain dependencies.
• Enhance test infrastructure to improve coverage, execution efficiency, and reporting/triage workflows.
• Architect, build, and deploy agentic AI workflows and autonomous QA agents to automate complex tasks such as end-to-end test case generation, intelligent regression scoping, and predictive failure analysis.
• Typical effort split: 60% firmware test execution & troubleshooting, 20% firmware test design & development, 20% AI infrastructure & agentic tool development.

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:

• Minimum 4 years of relevant experience in firmware/software development, validation, or test development.
• Hands‑on experience with SoC or system‑level bring‑up and low‑level debugging.
• Strong foundation in computer architecture and enterprise server platform features.
• Practical experience writing test code and tools in C and/or C++, and scripting in Python, Perl, or Bash.
• Demonstrated experience building or deploying AI applications, specifically autonomous agents, LLM-backed tools, or RAG architectures applied to engineering or testing pipelines.
• Experience or knowledge in one or more of the following areas is highly desirable (with emphasis on system/firmware development or testability):

• BIOS concepts (e.g., ACPI, SMBIOS tables)
• RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability) features and validation
• Memory subsystem validation (DDR, persistent memory, error injection, etc.)
• Power management and telemetry
• Platform security features (TPM, SPDM, Secure Boot, RoT-based attestation, etc.)
• Virtualization and firmware enablement (ACPI, SR-IOV, etc.)
• High-speed I/O validation (PCIe, CXL)
• Sideband protocols (MCTP, SPDM, PLDM, RDE, etc.)