Lead SDET

Department: Software - Platform

Location: San Francisco, Remote (US)

Compensation: $130K – $170K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Wispr

Wispr is an AI research and product company building the voice interface for computing. AI can now reason, code, and act. Yet, humans still do the work of the interface. We think that’s backwards.

Our first products are Flow, which lets you speak naturally in any application, and Notetaker, which builds context across conversations. We’re building toward an interface that can perceive, understand, and take action with earned trust. That means solving hard problems across models, systems, and product - and caring about the final human experience as deeply as the technology underneath it.

We’re a talent-dense team that holds strong opinions, tests them quickly, and builds technology that sparks joy. Our goal is to build the first voice interface used every day by a billion people.

What you will do

We’re looking for a Lead Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to build the quality practice behind Flow. You’ll own test strategy, write automation, and personally investigate the product while helping our QA team grow.

• Build reliable automation. Develop and maintain automated tests for critical journeys across desktop, mobile, backend services, and integrations. Choose the right mix of unit, integration, and end-to-end coverage.

• Make regression testing continuous. Partner with engineering to run automated checks against internal builds, integrate them into CI/CD, and establish dependable release gates.

• Test beyond the happy path. Personally explore real-world voice workflows, permissions, device and network changes, cross-app behavior, and updates. Catch usability and consistency issues as well as functional bugs.

• Own release confidence. Prioritize testing by risk, investigate failures, and use test results, telemetry, and customer impact to make clear release recommendations.

• Bring quality into development. Work with engineering, product, design, and support from planning through launch. Turn requirements, incidents, and escaped defects into better coverage.

• Lead through doing. Set standards, coach our QA team and testing partners, and coordinate coverage while remaining hands-on and driving testing yourself.

Who you are

• An experienced quality engineer. You’ve owned testing for complex software and built or maintained automated suites that teams rely on.

• A capable programmer. You can write readable test code, build fixtures and test harnesses, debug failures, and keep automation reliable in CI.

• A systems thinker. You reason across clients, APIs, operating systems, and integrations. You know where mocks help and where real devices and end-to-end checks are essential.

• An incisive investigator. You turn vague reports into reproducible bugs, use logs and other evidence to isolate causes, and distinguish product failures from test or environment failures.

• Product-minded and detail-oriented. You care about usability, responsiveness, accessibility, and trust, and know which risks matter most to users.

• A hands-on leader. You communicate clearly, coach others, and build useful processes in a fast-moving team. Experience with native apps, audio, speech recognition, or AI output evaluation is a plus.

Logistics

We sponsor H1B, O1, EB1, L1, STEM OPT, and more. We cant guarantee sponsorship for every role, but if we make you an offer well make every reasonable effort, with help from our immigration law firm.

We strongly encourage you to apply even if you dont meet every qualification. The strongest candidates we meet rarely do, so dont exclude yourself prematurely. Were rethinking how humans interact with AI, and doing that well demands diversity of perspective and experience.

Were committed to a fair and accessible interview process. If you need any accommodations or adjustments, please let us know.