Senior Software Development Engineer in Test, Confidential Computing - SDET
NVIDIA Corporation · Santa Clara, CA
$168,000–$270,250from the description
Jul 1, 2026
Santa Clara, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior quality engineering role focused on building and maintaining large-scale test automation infrastructure for NVIDIA's Confidential Computing team. The work centers on developing test plans, orchestrating software validation across distributed GPU-connected server farms and cloud environments, and creating automation frameworks that run hundreds of tests daily across multiple chip architectures. Suits an experienced engineer with a strong background in Linux, Python, C/C++, and QA methodology for complex hardware-software systems.
Senior level · 8+ years · Santa Clara, CA · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 50 people in the Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software quality assurance analysts and testers). range 30–70
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $170,192 (middle half $126,400–$188,281). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
The role is titled 'Senior Software Development Engineer in Test' and sits squarely in QA/test automation (test plan development, test infrastructure, regression testing, automation frameworks), making 15-1253 the primary SOC. However, the posting also emphasizes substantial software development work (building distributed systems, automation frameworks, infrastructure at scale), so 15-1252 is a credible runner-up.
Location is not explicitly stated in the posting; NVIDIA's Enterprise SWQA team is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA — the CBSA reflects that best guess.
Degree requirement is 'BS or MS in Engineering (or equivalent experience)' — the explicit 'or equivalent experience' clause means no formal degree is hard-gated.
AI tools for automation and test plan development are listed under the required qualifications with language calling this expertise 'crucial' — treated as a hard gate despite being a broad category rather than a named product.
Hypervisor experience ('a big plus') appears in the required qualifications section but is explicitly framed as a plus, not a gate — treated as preferred.
The 'Ways to stand out from the crowd' section is treated as the preferred/nice-to-have block: Ansible, Docker, Xen/KVM/Hyper-V, CMake/automake/meson, and CUDA/OpenACC all come from there.
Xen is listed as the primary with KVM and Hyper-V as named alternatives in the same parenthetical; all three are captured under one skill entry.
The compensation range ($168,000–$270,250/year) is stated explicitly and includes equity and benefits on top of base salary.
Ignored 3 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): QA methodology, cluster management, cloud architecture.
Read the full posting
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