Staff SDET, CFW at Netskope

About Netskope Today, there's more data and users outside the enterprise than inside, causing the network perimeter as we know it to dissolve. We realized a new perimeter was needed, one that is built in the cloud and follows and protects data wherever it goes, so we started Netskope to redefine Cloud, Network and Data Security. Since 2012, we have built the market-leading cloud security company and an award-winning culture powered by hundreds of employees spread across offices in Santa Clara, St. Louis, Bangalore, London, Paris, Melbourne, Taipei, and Tokyo. Our core values are openness, honesty, and transparency, and we purposely developed our open desk layouts and large meeting spaces to support and promote partnerships, collaboration, and teamwork. From catered lunches and office celebrations to employee recognition events and social professional groups such as the Awesome Women of Netskope (AWON), we strive to keep work fun, supportive and interactive. Visit us at Netskope Careers. Please follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter@Netskope. About the Role We are looking for a Staff SDET Engineer to join our Cloud Firewall engineering team, responsible for validating large-scale cloud-delivered firewall services operating across globally distributed infrastructure. The Cloud Firewall platform processes enterprise network traffic across multiple protocols and services, providing capabilities such as L3–L7 policy enforcement, traffic classification, DNS security, DLP inspection, service chaining, and microservice-based traffic processing across global points of presence. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy working on deep networking problems, distributed systems validation, large-scale traffic testing, and automation-driven quality engineering. As a Staff engineer, you will help define how complex security services are validated, scaled, and operated reliably in production environments. What You Will Do System Validation and Test Strategy • Design and execute test strategies for Cloud Firewall services and traffic inspection pipelines • Perform end-to-end validation across multi-node and multi-region deployments • Validate L3–L7 policy enforcement across different protocols and enterprise traffic patterns • Verify correctness of policy evaluation, rule processing, and security service chaining workflows • Ensure high availability, failover, and resiliency across distributed deployments Traffic Processing and Platform Validation • Validate traffic classification, session management, and packet processing workflows across Cloud Firewall services • Ensure correct handling of multi-protocol enterprise traffic flows and application identification • Validate interactions across microservice-based dataplane processing pipelines Automation and Testing Frameworks • Build and evolve automation frameworks for functional, regression, and system-level testing • Develop automated validation suites using Python • Integrate automated validation with CI/CD and release pipelines • Develop tooling to simulate real-world enterprise traffic patterns and system failure scenarios Scale and Performance Validation • Design and execute large-scale traffic testing across distributed firewall deployments • Simulate enterprise workloads across globally distributed POP environments • Measure and analyze throughput, latency, connection scale, and system resource utilization • Identify performance bottlenecks and collaborate with engineering teams to improve system performance Debugging and System Diagnostics • Perform deep debugging using tcpdump, Wireshark, logs, metrics, and packet captures • Investigate complex issues involving traffic processing, policy enforcement, and microservice interactions • Participate in root cause analysis for production incidents and customer escalations AI-Driven Testing • Apply AI-assisted testing techniques to improve coverage and defect detection • Use AI for intelligent traffic simulation, anomaly detection, and automated analysis of system telemetry • Improve debugging and test efficiency through AI-driven diagnostics Staff-Level Responsibilities • Define and influence the validation architecture and quality strategy for major Cloud Firewall components • Drive testing standards and automation practices across engineering teams • Partner with engineering teams during design and architecture reviews to ensure testability and reliability • Lead complex system debugging and validation efforts for critical platform features • Mentor engineers and help raise the technical bar for quality engineering across the organization. Required Skills and Experience Networking Fundamentals • Strong understanding of TCP/IP networking fundamentals • Knowledge of network traffic flows, routing, NAT, and policy enforcement • Experience with packet capture and network debugging tool. Automation and Programming • Strong programming experience in Python • Experience building or extending automation frameworks • Familiarity with REST API testing and service validation • Comfortable working in Linux environments Performance and Systems • Experience with network traffic generation or performance testing tools • Understanding of network performance metrics and capacity testing • Ability to design large-scale realistic test scenarios Infrastructure and Distributed Systems • Experience testing cloud or distributed infrastructure systems • Familiarity with microservices architectures and containerized platforms • Experience with observability and monitoring tools Qualifications • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience • 10+ years of experience in QA, SDET, or distributed systems testing roles • Experience testing network security platforms, firewall systems, or distributed networking services Nice to Have • Experience with cloud firewall or security gateway platforms • Experience validating large-scale distributed dataplane systems • Experience testing enterprise networking or security infrastructure • Experience applying AI techniques to testing or system diagnostics What We Look For • Strong debugging and analytical skills • Automation-first mindset • Ability to own validation areas end-to-end • Comfort working in fast-paced distributed systems environments • Strong communication and collaboration skills #LI-CP1 Compensation: At Netskope, salary is one component of our competitive total rewards package. The salary range for this position is as listed below. This is a national range. For purposes of complying with applicable laws, the range applies to candidates in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Washington, and other states. The successful candidate’s starting pay will also be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, location, and market conditions. For all sales roles, the posted salary range is the On Target Earnings (OTE) range for the role, which is the sum of base salary and target commission amount at 100% goal achievement. In addition to salary, candidates may be eligible for other forms of compensation such as participation in a bonus plan (for non-sales roles) and a stock award program. Candidates may also be eligible for a comprehensive health plan and other benefits that can be reviewed at Netskope Benefits site. Salary Range$111,000—$205,500 USDNetskope is committed to implementing equal employment opportunities for all employees and applicants for employment. Netskope does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices based on religion, race, color, sex, marital or veteran statues, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, genetic information, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), or any other characteristic protected by the laws or regulations of any jurisdiction in which we operate. Netskope respects your privacy and is committed to protecting the personal information you share with us, please refer to Netskope's Privacy Policy for more details. The application window for this position is expected to close within 50 days. You may apply by filling out the below information, or visiting our Netskope Careers site.