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Senior Director, Software Development, Test Automation

Lila Sciences· Software
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San Francisco, CAFull-timePosted 3mo ago

About the role

Senior leadership role to architect and build Lila's test automation platform and quality engineering practice for AI-powered scientific and lab automation products. Owns test automation system, CI/CD test infrastructure, AI-driven test tooling, and the eval discipline, with a federated operating model and ALCOA+ data integrity foundations.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and ship the test automation platform: design/build platform, frameworks, fixtures, golden datasets, test orchestration, reporting; set standards across unit, integration, contract, end-to-end, regression, performance, and chaos testing for backend services, frontend monorepo, and data pipelines; treat platform metrics as first-class.
  • Make build-vs-buy decisions with conviction: own buy/build/borrow strategy across test infrastructure, eval platforms, browser/device clouds, observability, and lab QC tooling; justify choices with TCO, signal quality, integration cost, and time-to-leverage; bias toward leverage and differentiation for Lila.
  • Modernize CI/CD for fast, reliable signal: own test execution layer of CI/CD (parallelization, caching, hermetic environments, ephemeral preview envs, affected-only test selection); build retry/quarantine/impact-analysis; improve metrics like change-failure rate, MTTR, test effectiveness, pipeline efficiency, coverage, PR-to-prod lead time.
  • Drive AI-driven test automation: apply LLMs across test lifecycle (test generation from specs/PRs, self-healing UI tests, synthesis, visual regression); validate AI-generated tests via evals; establish eval discipline for AI/agent stack with golden datasets, rubrics, regression suites, offline/online evaluation pipelines.
  • Define and operate the quality metrics system: define quality SLOs/adoption metrics by team/service (coverage, escape rate, MTTR, change-failure rate, eval pass rate, lab QC violation rate); build dashboards from PR to exec review; apply Google SRE practices.
  • Mid-long term - Stand up the QC framework for lab automation: design validation framework, harnesses, contracts for lab/Science Ops; embed ALCOA+ data integrity and audit trails; partner with Research Ops on validation patterns for autonomous lab execution.
  • Lead and coach across the engineering org: build a 3–5 person team of test automation engineers focused on platform leverage; coach teams on test design and adoption; translate UX/customer issues into testable contracts and platform improvements.
  • First 6–12 Month Outcomes: establish baselines and publish a quality scorecard; hire onboard 1–2 platform engineers; ship v1 of test automation platform adopted by at least one flagship team; stand up eval discipline; drive default platform adoption and AI-driven test automation in production; deliver QC framework with ALCOA+ trails.

Qualifications

  • 10+ years in software engineering, 5+ years leading test automation, quality engineering, or platform/SRE-adjacent functions
  • 3+ years managing engineers, including building or scaling a team
  • Strong software architect/engineer; Python and/or Typescript hands-on experience
  • Deep CI/CD expertise: GitHub Actions or equivalent at scale, monorepo build/test orchestration (Nx, Turborepo, or Bazel), test parallelization and caching, hermetic environments, ephemeral preview envs, flake quarantine, test impact analysis
  • Demonstrated build-vs-buy judgment with test infra/eval platforms/observability and TCO considerations
  • Hands-on AI-driven test automation experience with eval frameworks
  • Track record of standing up a test automation platform adopted by engineering teams
  • Working knowledge of Google's SRE practices with view on applicability to pre-production quality
  • Metrics-driven leader leveraging platform to drive outcomes, not gatekeeping
  • Customer- and UX-first mindset: testing as a driver of user experience, not a cost center

Benefits

  • Full-time U.S. benefits: medical, dental, vision; employer-paid life and disability; flexible time off with holidays; parental leave; educational assistance; commuter benefits including bike share; subsidized lunch program
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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About Lila Sciences

Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence

Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.

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