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Alpaca is a US-headquartered global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries. The company provides institutional-grade APIs for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, and 24/5 trading, supporting over 10 million brokerage accounts. Backed by $400M in funding from top-tier investors including Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, and Y Combinator, Alpaca operates a globally distributed team of 400+ engineers and professionals.
As a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test on the Platform Team, you will lead efforts to improve Alpaca's automated and manual testing infrastructure, enabling developers to quickly and reliably deliver new features. This role requires deep expertise in testing best practices, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, and the ability to dig into application code when necessary.
Key responsibilities include: developing comprehensive testing strategies for the API surface; improving developer experience through standardized tooling and infrastructure; coordinating with cross-functional teams to enhance test coverage, reliability, and speed; mentoring product engineers to foster a culture of quality and continuous improvement; and designing and executing load, stress, and scalability tests to ensure the platform handles growing demand.
Required qualifications: 5+ years as an SDET or Senior QA Engineer; proficiency in strongly typed languages with at least 1 year Go experience; hands-on experience building and maintaining CI pipelines (GitHub Actions, Google Cloud Build); microservices architecture knowledge and automated test framework design; Kubernetes expertise including Helm chart development and security best practices; prior startup experience; and ability to own tasks end-to-end from requirements gathering through deployment and monitoring.
Nice-to-have skills include Python or TypeScript proficiency, Docker expertise, load testing with k6 and ghz, infrastructure-as-code with Argo CD or Terraform, GCP/GKE experience, Tilt familiarity, and experience testing event-driven systems with Kafka or Redpanda.
