Senior Software Engineer, Quality Engineering

About the role

Alpaca is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Platform team. In this role, you will be instrumental in developing and maintaining the foundational systems, tools, and deployment pipelines that enable our engineers to deliver new features efficiently and reliably. This is a hands-on software development position focused on building quality into our systems.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Develop and implement automated testing frameworks for our REST and gRPC API services.
• Integrate AI and large language models to enhance test creation, improve regression detection, and convert production incidents into automated checks within our core engineering frameworks.
• Build and manage continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines, utilizing tools like GitHub Actions and Google Cloud Build.
• Design and conduct performance, stress, and scalability tests to ensure our platform can meet increasing demand.
• Introduce chaos engineering principles through fault injection experiments to proactively identify and address potential system failures.
• Standardize development tools and infrastructure to enhance the daily productivity of our engineering teams.
• Collaborate with various teams to elevate test coverage, system reliability, and service delivery speed.
• Investigate and resolve application code issues, driving them to a complete fix.
• Guide and mentor product engineers, promoting a culture that prioritizes quality and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• A minimum of 5 years of experience as a software engineer, with a focus on building and maintaining production systems.
• Proficiency in strongly typed programming languages, including at least 1 year of hands-on experience with Go.
• Demonstrated experience using AI-assisted engineering tools, such as LLMs, in your development workflow, with a clear understanding of their impact on quality.
• Prior experience building and maintaining CI pipelines, preferably with GitHub Actions or Google Cloud Build.
• Proven ability to design and construct automated test frameworks, with an understanding of the complexities of testing microservices.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes beyond basic usage, including the ability to create Helm charts, understand security best practices, and possess prior work experience or certifications in this area.
• Experience working in a startup environment, understanding the dynamics of rapid development, technical debt, and the need for adaptability.
• A proactive approach to task management, from requirement gathering and solution implementation to deployment and monitoring.

Nice to have

• Experience using AI/LLM tools for QA automation, such as test generation, flaky test analysis, or incident-to-regression pipelines.
• Development experience in Python or TypeScript, and the ability to create efficient Dockerfiles and secure container images.
• Experience implementing load tests with k6 (REST) and ghz (gRPC), and analyzing pprof/trace output.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Argo CD or Terraform, and experience with Google Cloud Platform and Google Kubernetes Engine.
• Experience with Tilt and developing Kubernetes Operators.
• Practical experience with chaos engineering tools like Chaos Mesh, LitmusChaos, or Gremlin.
• Familiarity with testing event-driven systems, particularly Kafka or Redpanda.

Skills & tools

• Go
• Kubernetes
• GitHub Actions
• Google Cloud Build
• REST APIs
• gRPC APIs
• AI/LLM tooling
• Docker
• Helm
• k6
• ghz
• pprof
• Argo CD
• Terraform
• Google Cloud Platform
• Google Kubernetes Engine
• Tilt
• Kafka
• Redpanda
• Chaos Mesh
• LitmusChaos
• Gremlin

Practical notes

• Competitive salary and stock options
• Health benefits
• New hire home-office setup stipend: USD $500 one-time
• Monthly stipend: USD $150 per month via Brex Card