Principal Test Automation Engineer
D Matrix
Santa Clara, CA · $195k–$285k a year · Posted October 15, 2026
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Where Santa Clara, CA ranks
Where Santa Clara, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for sales pay after cost of living$175k · of 45
- #1Best cities for product pay after cost of living$224k · of 14
- #2Best cities for operations pay after cost of living$173k · of 41
- #2Best cities for marketing pay after cost of living$192k · of 16
- #2Best all-round cities for remote workers in the West Coast85 / 100 · of 39
- #3Best cities for finance pay after cost of living$156k · of 35
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
- Most requested AI skills in engineering jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (6.1%)
- AI tools named most often in engineering jobs #1 Claude (1.7%)
- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among software quality assurance analysts and testers, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for software quality assurance analysts and testers: 52% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
Join d-Matrix and help build the future of AI inference. We’ve pioneered a memory-centric architecture that brings compute directly into memory, making AI faster, more energy efficient, and accessible on a global scale. From chips and software to rack-scale systems, our team is tackling some of AI infrastructure’s hardest challenges — and shipping breakthrough technology today. If you want to create what comes next and help make infinite inference possible, we’d love to hear from you.
Our culture is built on respect, collaboration, and direct communication. We value humility, we believe our different perspectives lead to better solutions, and we’re looking for people who are driven by execution and energized by hard problems.
Principal Test Automation Engineer
Location: Santa Clara, Ca / Remote, US
Role Overview
d-Matrix is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to define and build how we use AI-enabled automation across the software development lifecycle, from build and CI through testing and release. Our codebase spans a kernel compiler, firmware, device drivers, and an inference serving stack running on silicon we designed ourselves. Tests require real hardware, correctness is numerical rather than pass/fail, and failures can originate in any of several layers. You will set the technical direction for AI-enabled workflow automation and build the foundations other engineers rely on, including the agent harness, integrations into GitLab, Jira, test results, and logs, guardrails, and evaluation methods that show whether an automation actually helped. You will stay hands-on and ship the hardest pieces yourself, working alongside a Senior/Staff engineer in the same area while raising the bar for how the broader engineering organization uses AI in its daily work.
What You Will Do
- Set the technical direction for AI-enabled workflow automation across build, CI, test, and release.
- Build the shared foundation, including the agent harness and tool integrations into GitLab, Jira, test results, logs, and observability data.
- Develop evaluation methodology to measure whether an automation saves time and preserves correctness.
- Define guardrails and standards for where AI acts autonomously, where it proposes and a human decides, and how every change stays auditable.
- Deliver the first Quality Engineering automations, including cross-layer failure attribution, failure clustering and defect deduplication, coverage-gap analysis, and release-readiness summaries.
- Raise the bar across engineering through shared patterns, design reviews, and mentoring.
- Determine when an agent, a deterministic tool with a narrow model step, or a simple script is the right solution, and teach that judgment to others.
What You Will Bring
- Extensive production software engineering experience, with strong Python skills.
- Enough Rust and/or C++ experience to understand build flows and diagnose compiler errors.
- Experience shipping AI-enabled tools or automation that others relied on in production, beyond demos.
- Deep hands-on experience with LLM APIs, agent harnesses, tool integration, and context engineering.
- Experience designing evaluations for nondeterministic systems, showing that an automation helped without breaking something else.
- Sound judgment about when AI is the right tool, including examples of choosing not to use it.
- Strong fluency across the development lifecycle, including CI/CD, testing, and release processes.
- A track record of setting technical direction across teams that do not report to you.
Preferred Qualifications
- Exposure to compilers, firmware, or hardware-in-the-loop test environments.
- Experience building tool integrations with MCP or similar protocols.
- Experience working with GitLab, Jira, or Prometheus APIs.
- Experience managing cost and latency in LLM-based systems.
- Daily use of AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Copilot, with well-formed opinions on where they help and where they do not.
Equal Opportunity Employment Policy
d-Matrix is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and affirmative action employer. We’re committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcomed and empowered to do their best work. We hire the best talent for our teams, regardless of race, religion, color, age, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ancestry, genetic information, marital status, national origin, political affiliation, or veteran status. Our focus is on hiring teammates with humble expertise, kindness, dedication, and a willingness to embrace challenges and learn together every day.
d-Matrix does not accept resumes or candidate submissions from external agencies. We appreciate the interest and effort of recruitment firms, but we kindly request that individuals interested in opportunities with d-Matrix apply directly through our official channels. This approach allows us to streamline our hiring processes and maintain a consistent and fair evaluation of all applicants. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.