Toptal: Senior QA Engineer

You will be the senior technical point of contact for a large wearable ecosystem in the field, supporting around ten thousand devices and hundreds of smart stations deployed globally. This is a hands on support QA role focused on root cause analysis across firmware, hardware, software, and connectivity, working with customers, support, and manufacturing rather than classic product feature QA.

Tasks and deliverables:

• Act as a senior support QA engineer for wearables and smart stations deployed globally, with a focus on devices in Mexico and surrounding regions.
• Investigate complex field issues reported from customers, support, and sales teams, involving firmware, hardware, software, connectivity, antennas, and user behavior.
• Collect and analyze logs from Linux based devices (for example journalctl, dmesg, system logs) and related backend systems.
• Reproduce, isolate, and triage issues across multiple layers: firmware, hardware, networking, and mobile / client applications.
• Provide clear troubleshooting guidance for internal teams and customers, including step by step instructions to collect data and logs.
• Work closely with manufacturing and production teams to analyze failures, identify patterns across units (for example firmware version, batch, serial number), and support root cause investigations.
• Maintain traceability and follow up for RMAs and critical incidents, ensuring proper documentation of root cause and corrective actions.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to prioritize and communicate field issues, including preparing concise, data rich incident reports.
• Use internal APIs and tools (for example AWS based dashboards) to correlate device data, events, and configurations across manufacturing and field environments.
• Participate in on site visits when needed to better understand operational environments and assist with complex troubleshooting.

Engagement highlights:

• High impact role supporting a large, globally deployed wearable ecosystem.
• Unique combination of QA engineering mindset and real world field support, not typical feature testing.
• Opportunity to work across the full stack of the product: hardware, firmware, connectivity, and user environments.
• Close collaboration with customers, support, sales, and manufacturing to drive real improvements in reliability and user experience.
• Mix of remote analytical work and occasional on site troubleshooting, keeping the role varied and engaging.

General Information:

• Role: Senior Support QA Engineer (Wearables / Embedded Support)
• Location: Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala
• Commitment: Full time contractor
• Duration: 8–12 months with a high likelihood of extension
• Time zone: Local Mexican time zone with overlap to both Americas and European teams as needed
• Work style: Hybrid between remote work, customer site visits.

• 5+ years of experience in QA engineering, technical support engineering, or field engineering for embedded, IoT, or hardware based products.
• Strong problem solving skills with a track record of debugging multi factor issues involving firmware, hardware, and connectivity.
• Solid knowledge of Linux based systems, including reading and interpreting system and kernel logs (journalctl, dmesg, syslog, etc).
• Understanding of wireless and network technologies relevant to wearables (for example Wi Fi, Bluetooth, antennas, basic RF considerations).
• Experience debugging embedded systems and differentiating whether issues originate in firmware, hardware, or supporting infrastructure.
• Exposure to scripting and automation (Python preferred; C or C++ experience is a plus) for data analysis, log parsing, or test utilities.
• Familiarity with tools such as Raspberry Pi or similar embedded Linux platforms is a plus.
• Experience interacting with APIs and cloud environments (for example AWS) to retrieve and analyze device and manufacturing data is a plus.
• Comfortable working with production/manufacturing teams and understanding how manufacturing variations can affect field performance.
• Strong communication skills, able to translate technical findings into clear explanations for customers and non technical stakeholders.
• Language: Fluent in Latin American Spanish and comfortable communicating in English with international engineering teams.