Job Description: Embedded Software Test Engineer
We are seeking an experienced Embedded Software Test Engineer with strong hands-on manual testing experience in embedded and medical-device software. The candidate should be able to analyze requirements, create comprehensive verification scenarios, identify edge cases independently, and ensure high-quality software verification in a regulated development environment.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Perform manual verification and validation of embedded software, firmware and hardware-software integration.
2. Develop test plans, test protocols, test procedures, test cases, and test reports based on software requirements, system requirements, design specifications, and risk controls.
3. Review requirements for completeness, clarity, testability, and traceability.
4. Create unit-level, integration-level, system-level, regression, negative, boundary, and fault-injection test cases.
5. Identify missing, ambiguous, incomplete, or non-testable requirements and work with systems, software, QA, and product teams to clarify them.
6. Independently think beyond documented requirements to identify real-world, misuse, failure, recovery, stress, timing, communication, power-loss, and edge-case scenarios.
7. Execute manual test cases on target embedded hardware, test benches, simulators, and HILSIL environments where applicable.
8. Validate firmware behavior across normal, abnormal, boundary, error, recovery, reboot, reset, and long-duration operating conditions.
9. Perform hardware-software integration testing for embedded interfaces such as UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, USB, Ethernet, BLE, Wi-Fi, GPIO, ADC, PWM, timers, DMA, and sensoractuator interfaces.
10. Investigate test failures using logs, serial consoles, GDB, JTAG, Lauterbach TRACE32, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and other debugging tools.
11. Log, triage, reproduce, analyze, and verify resolution of defects using Jira or a similar defect-management system.
12. Maintain traceability between user needs, system requirements, software requirements, risk controls, test cases, test execution results, defects, and verification evidence.
13. Support root-cause analysis, corrective actions, regression testing, and verification of field issues.
14. Prepare clear and audit-ready verification documentation, including execution evidence, screenshots, logs, trace files, test reports, and traceability matrices.
15. Collaborate with firmware engineers, systems engineers, hardware engineers, QAQE, clinicalproduct teams, and regulatory stakeholders.
Required Qualifications
- Experience in manual testing of embedded software, firmware, embedded LinuxRTOS applications, or hardware-software integrated products.
- Strong understanding of Verification and Validation (V&V) processes.
- Ability to derive detailed test cases from requirements, architecturedesign documentation, interface specifications, and risk controls.
- Ability to identify missing requirements and propose clarifying requirements or testable acceptance criteria.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think beyond normal functional scenarios.
- Experience with requirements-based testing, test-case design, defect management, regression testing, root-cause analysis, and release validation.
- Experience with embedded communication protocols and hardware interfaces such as UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, Ethernet, USB, BLE, Wi-Fi, GPIO, ADC, PWM, DMA, or sensors.
- Experience using embedded debugging tools such as serial logs, GDB, JTAG, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, or TRACE32.
- Understanding of software-development lifecycle practices, configuration management, controlled releases, and documentation.
- Strong written communication skills for test protocols, test cases, defect reports, traceability records, and verification reports.
Medical Device Requirements:
- Good understanding of IEC 62304 medical-device software lifecycle processes.
- Experience or strong knowledge of regulated software V&V, including requirements traceability, software verification, defect handling, change impact assessment, and release documentation.
- Understanding of how test evidence supports audit readiness and design-control records.
- Experience with FDA-regulated medical-device product development is preferred.
- Familiarity with ISO 13485, ISO 14971, design controls, risk controls, and quality-system processes is a plus.
Good to Have:
- Automation testing exposure using Python, Pytest, Shell scripting, Jenkins, GitLab CICD, GTestGMock, or hardware-test automation frameworks.
- HIL, SIL, simulator-based testing, bench testing, and target-hardware testing experience.
- Embedded Linux, QNX, FreeRTOS, VxWorks, Zephyr, ThreadX, or bare-metal firmware-testing experience.
- Experience with Jama, Polarion, DOORS, Jira, TestRail, Azure DevOps, or similar requirementstest-management tools.
- Experience testing bootloaders, firmware upgrades, OTA updates, rollback, secure boot, image validation, power-loss recovery, and device recovery flows.
- Experience supporting 510(k), DHF, design-history-file, or audit activities.
Expected Testing Mindset: The candidate should be able to go beyond the written requirement and ask questions such as:
- What happens if the input is missing, corrupted, delayed, duplicated, or out of range?
- What happens if power is interrupted during a software update, firmware flash, boot sequence, or data write?
- What happens if a sensor disconnects, reports invalid data, responds slowly, or produces intermittent values?
- What happens if an I2CSPIUARTCAN communication failure occurs during normal operation?
- What happens if the system reboots, runs out of memory, loses network connectivity, or receives invalid configuration data?
- Is the requirement measurable, unambiguous, testable, and linked to an expected result?
- Is there adequate positive, negative, boundary, integration, stress, recovery, and regression coverage?
- If the requirement is safety-related, what is the expected safe state, alarm behavior, recovery behavior, and verification evidence?
