Sr Quality Engineer, Embedded

Welcome to the intersection of energy and home services. At NRG, we’re driven by our passion to create a smarter, cleaner and more connected future.

Vivint Smart Home, an NRG owned company, is a leading smart home company in the United States, dedicated to redefining the home experience with intelligent products and services. We find purpose in proactively protecting and keeping our customers connected to home, no matter where they are. Join the Smart Home team to create smarter, safer and more sustainable homes.

We’re hiring a Senior-level Manual Test Engineer to own and drive high-quality testing outcomes across critical product areas. You will be a domain expert in test execution and quality risk, partnering closely with Engineering, Product, and cross-functional peers to identify the best approach, find defects early, and ensure releases are reliable and customer-ready. This is a hands-on role requiring strong manual testing expertise, clear communication, and a consistent track record of shipping quality.

Responsibilities

• Own quality for your area: Take accountability for your work product and the impact it has on the system and adjacent work products; help break down complex issues into manageable testing strategies.
• Drive cross-team collaboration: Proactively collaborate with partners outside your immediate team to evaluate options, align on quality risks, and support the best decision-making.
• Create clear, durable documentation: Produce written communication (test plans, test results, bug reports, and knowledge articles) that others can easily follow in tools like Confluence/Jira/Slack (or equivalents).
• Improve execution and outcomes: Scope and stage testing work into well-defined milestones, prioritize high-value coverage early, and actively avoid unnecessary scope creep.
• Champion customer experience: Identify high-impact issues quickly, validate fixes thoroughly, and advocate for the right bugs to be fixed to protect the end-user experience.
• Support automation efforts (as applicable): Identify areas that should be automated. Quickly determine the source of failures.
• Troubleshoot effectively: Apply structured troubleshooting approaches to isolate issues across software, hardware, networking, and environment factors.

Required Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Linux and Python (comfortable working from the command line and creating/debugging scripts).
• Exposure to embedded devices and testing hardware/software interactions.
• Understanding of networking technologies such as Wi‑Fi, cellular, and Z-Wave (or similar protocols) and how they impact behavior, performance, and reliability.
• Exposure to C and C++ (reading code, recognizing common defects, collaborating effectively with engineers).
• Troubleshooting mindset: exposure to common diagnostic approaches and techniques (log analysis, reproduction isolation, configuration/environment validation, etc.).
• Ability to triage issues, react well to change, work cross-functionally, and multi-task while protecting critical coverage.
• Solid verbal and written communication with a strong ability to document clearly and drive alignment.
• Organized, curious, and excited about technology—takes ownership and follows through.

Education

• CS or EE educational background (degree preferred or equivalent practical experience).

What Success Looks Like at the Senior Level

• You are viewed as a go-to expert in at least one domain area and require little-to-no guidance when learning unfamiliar systems.
• You bring strong judgment, actively seek feedback, and consistently balance tradeoffs to deliver the right quality outcomes.
• You challenge ideas respectfully, align on decisions, and execute effectively.
• You raise overall team capability by mentoring others occasionally (test strategy feedback, defect investigations, and best-practice guidance).
• Familiarity with test management/defect tracking tools (e.g., Jira, Xray/TestRail, Confluence).

Working Conditions

• This job operates in a professional office environment, including sitting/standing at a desk for the duration of the day.

NRG Energy is committed to a drug and alcohol-free workplace. To the extent permitted by law and any applicable collective bargaining agreement, employees are subject to periodic random drug testing, and post-accident and reasonable suspicion drug and alcohol testing. EOE AA M/F/Protected Veteran Status/Disability. Level, Title and/or Salary may be adjusted based on the applicant's experience or skills.

EEO is the Law Poster (The poster can be found at http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/upload/poster_screen_reader_optimized.pdf)

Official description on file with Talent.