---
title: 'Software Engineer - Test Automation at Specter'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-test-automation-specter-san-francisco-9dgw116g3zj7'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-19'
---

# Software Engineer - Test Automation at Specter

- **Company:** Specter
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-03-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-19
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/eb3dd1da-a129-45d3-9fa6-95d87283097d

## Job description

Company Background Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world. Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment. Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

## The Role

You’re responsible for catching defects that span our entire product lifecycle hardware-in-the-loop testers for engineering, qualification rigs, and production-floor stations. At Specter, unified testing automation infrastructure underpins our ability to guarantee reliability while we design and ship hardware at breakneck speeds—this is not a service to a specific team, rather a foundational piece of what makes a hardware company successful. For every new design you’re engaged from the start—sitting with hardware and software engineers to drive testability into the design itself and define what needs to be tested, when, why, and how. From then on, you’re accountable for defects that evade detection—you own the design’s qualification, its testability, and production testing to prove each and every unit works. Wherever a failure surfaces, you’re expected to be responsive and own the debug: mechanical, electrical, and software, until you find the root cause and feedback the findings into catching them next time.

Responsibilities:

- Test fixture and software development — Design and build test fixtures and write the software that drives them. Python for orchestration and high-level logic, Rust for low-level hardware communication and performance-critical paths.
- Qualification and reliability testing — Build rigs that demonstrate designs can survive years of environmental stress while maintaining performance. Ensure design changes are qualified before they reach the production line.
- Test requirements and design for testability — Engage early in the design process with HW, FW, and ME teams to drive testability requirements into the design and define what gets tested, at what stage, and to what pass/fail criteria. Translate engineering intent into executable test specifications that cover qualification, production, and hardware-in-theloop scenarios.
- Cross-domain debugging — When units fail in unexpected ways, dig across mechanical, electrical, and software boundaries to find root cause. Understand schematics, probe test points, and read firmware logs.
- Failure analysis — In the inevitable cases where units fail in the field, interrogate root causes and integrate the lessons into future testing to avoid repeating these mistakes

Qualifications:

- Strong Python — You’ve built test frameworks, automation systems, or production tooling in Python. You write structured, maintainable code, not one-off scripts.
- Rust and/or C — You can write low-level code that interfaces directly with hardware— serial protocols, custom test equipment, or embedded targets. •Broad electronics knowledge — You can read schematics, identify test points, understand signal integrity basics, and probe a board to debug a failure. You don’t need to design the circuit, but you need to understand it.
- Mechanical intuition — You can think about fixtures, enclosures, thermals, and how a unit physically sits in a test nest. You can spec a fixture and work with a vendor to get it built.
- Project management and timeline ownership — You manage your own deliverables. You communicate status, flag risks early, and deliver on schedule without being chased.
- Manufacturing floor experience — You’ve worked in or closely with a production environment. You understand the difference between something that works on your bench and something that works at rate on the floor.

## About Specter

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Specter builds and deploys long-range wireless sensing networks with AI-powered real-time alerts and semantic search, creating the perception layer for the physical world.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not publicly disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Not publicly available (likely US based on website language and job postings)
- **Founded**: Not publicly available
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- Primary industries: Physical security, critical infrastructure monitoring, industrial IoT, real-time situational awareness
- Target customers: Enterprise and government – including energy companies, data centers, construction firms, ports, stadiums, industrial facilities, and campuses
- Mission statement: "Creating a Software Defined Physical World" – providing instant awareness through real-time alerts, semantic search, and a map-based view of every event

## Products & Services
- **Specter Platform**: A SaaS-based physical intelligence platform that ingests data from long-range wireless sensors (video, thermal, acoustic) and applies general AI (natural language alerts) to detect events such as unauthorized access, safety hazards, equipment anomalies, fires, spills, and perimeter breaches. Features include semantic search, live and historical event detection, and complete situational awareness dashboards.
- **Long-Range Wireless Sensing Network**: Proprietary hardware and software for rugged, wide-area coverage without trenching – deployed across refineries, deserts, offshore platforms, construction sites, and other harsh environments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue not publicly available; company is actively hiring (Software Engineer – Systems listing) and has a live product across multiple industry verticals.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available
- **Growth Signals**: Recent website updates as of June 2026; expanding to new use cases (energy, data centers, construction, ports, stadiums); job openings indicate scaling engineering team.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Long-range wireless sensing** that eliminates blind spots without trenching or on-site personnel – a differentiator for remote and harsh environments.
- **General AI with natural language alerts** – users set and query alerts in plain English, lowering the barrier for security and operations teams.
- **Multimodal sensing** (video, thermal, acoustic) combined with real-time analytics for high-fidelity event detection (e.g., PPE compliance, spills, equipment theft, person-down incidents).
- Focus on **critical infrastructure** where downtime or security gaps carry high stakes, creating deep vertical-specific moats.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding horizontal deployment across energy, data centers, construction, logistics, and campus security.
- Deepening AI capabilities through real-time semantic search and event detection to replace traditional CCTV monitoring.
- Building a “software-defined physical world” that unifies disparate sensors into a single intelligent layer.

## Why Work Here
- Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI + IoT systems that monitor real-world infrastructure at scale.
- Engineering culture likely emphasizes distributed systems, computer vision, edge computing, and high-reliability software (based on job description for Software Engineer – Systems).
- Fast-paced startup environment with a clear product-market fit across multiple verticals.
- Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated; job posting does not specify location, but likely offers flexibility.

## Sources
1. [specter.co](https://specter.co/)
2. [specter.co/product](https://specter.co/product)
3. [specter.co/industries](https://specter.co/industries)
4. [specter.co/features](https://specter.co/features)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Software Engineer – Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/fe26a690-7934-46f4-bce2-8d8c5495a0dc)

## Other roles at Specter

- [Optics & Camera Engineering Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/optics-camera-engineering-lead-specter-san-francisco-021ech8bvbse) — San Francisco, CA
- [CV/ML Camera Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/cv-ml-camera-test-engineer-specter-san-francisco-xfz6n3t10vk8) — San Francisco, CA
- [Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/manufacturing-engineer-specter-san-francisco-g75553wbxwx6) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Customer Operations Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-customer-operations-lead-specter-san-francisco-4e0jb5pg08bh) — San Francisco, CA
- [Wireless Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/wireless-software-engineer-specter-san-francisco-zvjchm89fzv0) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applied-ai-specter-san-francisco-p7er9310dx06) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Antenna Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-antenna-engineer-specter-san-francisco-xea2760wvrkw) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Platform Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-site-reliability-engineer-specter-san-francisco-c9mhsvjd32qq) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Deployment Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-deployment-strategist-specter-san-francisco-81ba238x3y8m) — San Francisco, CA