Principal Software Test Engineer - Solution Engineering – Customer Solution Validation

Description

This is a hybrid role, with an expected average of 2 days per week in an HPE office.

The company is the edge-to-cloud business behind HPE Networking, helping organizations connect, protect, analyze and act on data and applications from edge to cloud.

The team is building a principal-level solution test and automation role focused on quality for large-scale networking and distributed software. It is a hands-on individual contributor role with visible technical impact on products and major components, customer outcomes and engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Understand customer deployments, business needs, architectures and large-scale operations, then build validation strategies that cover them.
• Lead validation of customer solutions and complex networking deployments.
• Work with customers, field engineers, solution architects, sales engineers and services teams to confirm that networking solutions work in real environments and are ready to operate.
• Shape technical design workshops, architecture reviews and strategy discussions to improve reliability, scalability, observability and serviceability.
• Turn customer requirements into validation frameworks that can be reused.
• Present technical findings, risk assessments, quality recommendations and executive updates to customers and internal stakeholders.
• Lead cross-functional work that improves customer outcomes and product quality.
• Help set the automation strategy across products, programs and engineering teams.
• Design, build and grow scalable automation frameworks for functional, integration, system, resiliency, scale, performance and solution validation.
• Define engineering best practices for continuous validation in CI/CD pipelines.
• Drive new work in automation infrastructure, tooling and AI-assisted engineering.
• Lead organization-wide adoption of quality engineering methods that shorten time to market and raise engineering productivity.
• Find ways to simplify validation workflows and cut operating costs through automation.
• Validate distributed, multi-component software and networking platforms at scale.
• Use logs, metrics, traces, telemetry, observability platforms and diagnostic tools to troubleshoot complex failures.
• Lead root-cause investigations that span several teams and technology areas.
• Tell product defects apart from infrastructure, automation and environment problems.
• Influence architecture and design decisions to make products easier to test, diagnose and operate.
• Provide technical leadership on significant projects and programs.
• Act as a recognized internal authority on solution validation, automation and quality engineering.
• Lead and align engineering teams across functions around shared quality goals.
• Build quality into engineering practice across the full development lifecycle.
• Mentor engineers through guidance, reviews, coaching and knowledge sharing.
• Contribute to innovation through patents, white papers, standards work, publications and architecture proposals.
• Help build long-term technical capabilities that deliver recurring business value and customer impact.

Requirements

• Expert programming skills in Python, Go or C++, with deep proficiency in at least one of them.
• Extensive experience designing and building automation platforms, frameworks and quality engineering ecosystems.
• Experience running large-scale automated testing inside CI/CD environments.
• A proven record of delivering automation initiatives with real impact.
• Strong knowledge of Linux/UNIX, networking, processes, memory management and system internals.
• Extensive experience validating distributed and multi-component systems.
• Deep hands-on experience configuring and validating multi-vendor networks.
• Experience with service provider, enterprise and cloud networking deployments.
• Strong knowledge of performance testing and traffic generation platforms such as Ixia and Spirent.
• Deep expertise in system-level and end-to-end validation.
• Experience in multi-feature, longevity, resiliency, interoperability, scale and performance testing.
• Experience validating fault injection and recovery.
• Strong root-cause analysis and complex defect investigation skills.
• Advanced troubleshooting across multiple software and infrastructure layers.
• A record of delivering visible technical impact on products or major components.
• A proven ability to influence engineering decisions and technical direction within and across teams.
• Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to cross-functional technical initiatives.
• Nice to have: 12+ years of industry experience.
• Nice to have: advanced networking knowledge of Layer 2, Layer 3, TCP/IP, routing, MPLS, EVPN and data center technologies.
• Nice to have: experience with network operating systems, cloud infrastructure, observability platforms and distributed architectures.
• Nice to have: working knowledge of JUNOS.
• Nice to have: industry certifications such as JNCIA, CCIA or equivalent.
• Nice to have: experience using AI-assisted engineering tools for automation, test generation, diagnostics, failure analysis and productivity.
• Nice to have: a track record of innovation through patents, publications, standards contributions or architectural leadership.

Conditions

The role is hybrid, with an average of 2 days per week in an HPE office.

The annual base salary for California is USD 172,000 to 349,000. Actual offers may differ based on location, experience, education, training or skill level, and variable incentives may also be offered.

HPE is an equal opportunity employer and makes decisions on qualifications, merit and business need.

HPE will follow all applicable laws on the use of arrest and conviction records in hiring.

Benefits

• A broad package covering physical, financial and emotional wellbeing, for team members and their families.
• Career development programs, including paths toward deep subject expertise or a move into another division.
• Flexibility to manage work and personal needs.