Lead Software Development Engineer in Test - RadarFirst - Portland, OR

We are seeking a Lead Software Development Engineer in Test (Lead SDET) to architect and evolve our quality engineering strategy in today's AI-driven development landscape. This role is ideal for engineers who thrive at the intersection of test automation, modern tooling, and applied AI — delivering reliable, scalable, and maintainable quality systems that keep product velocity high while reducing risk.

As a Lead SDET, you'll own and advance our automated testing frameworks, introduce responsible AI-assisted QA practices, mentor engineers across the organization, and raise overall testing maturity across functional, performance, security, accessibility, and AI-enabled product capabilities.

This position can be based out of our HQ in Portland, OR, or remote from anywhere in the U.S.

Essential Responsibilities & Duties:

AI-Driven QA Strategy & Framework Ownership
• * Own and evolve the organization's automated testing framework and QA tooling ecosystem.
• Define and standardize best practices for AI-assisted test case generation, test data generation, and coverage discovery.
• Establish responsible AI guardrails for QA (validation, hallucination mitigation, structured outputs, and review standards).
• Implement intelligent test selection and regression analysis to reduce cycle time without increasing risk.
• Ensure AI-augmented tests remain deterministic, maintainable, and production-ready.

Test Architecture & Automation Excellence
• * Architect scalable automation across unit, integration, API, UI, contract, performance, and security testing.
• Champion modern testing principles (test pyramid / risk-based testing) and ensure each layer of the stack is appropriately tested.
• Integrate automation into CI/CD with enforceable quality gates and release readiness criteria.
• Lead root-cause analysis for systemic quality issues and recurring defects.

AI System Testing & Evaluation
• * Design evaluation frameworks for AI-assisted features (ground-truth testing, determ