Software Engineer Contract Jobs in Winona, MN (NOW HIRING)

Be a part of our mission! As a world leader in creating comfortable, sustainable, and efficient climate solutions for buildings, homes and transportation, it's our responsibility to put the planet first. For us at Trane Technologies, and through our businesses including TraneandThermo King, sustainability is not just how we do business-it is our business. Do you dare to look at the world's challenges and see impactful possibilities? Do you want to contribute to making a better future? If the answer is yes, we invite you to consider joining us in boldly challenging what's possible for a sustainable world.

Learn about our benefits designed for you to Thrive at work and at home.

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Where is the work:

Agentic Software Test Engineer - TRACE

At Trane Technologies we Challenge Possible. Our brands - including Trane and Thermo King - create access to cooling and comfort in buildings and homes, transport and protect food and perishables, connect customers to elevated performance with less environmental impact, dramatically reduce energy demands and carbon emissions, and innovate with a better world in mind. We boldly challenge what's possible for a sustainable world.

The Agentic Software Test Engineer - TRACE sits on the Customer Driven Solutions (C.D.S.) Team and runs the agentic testing organization for TRACE - the building energy simulation platform that powers HVAC load calculations, equipment sizing, and ASHRAE-compliant reporting for engineers worldwide.

You direct a team of AI testing agents across a multi-repo .NET / Blazor codebase, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the TRACE software developers as their dedicated QA partner. You're the captain of the agent crew and the quality voice the developers trust - coaching the agents, raising the bar, and putting your name on the work that ships.

This is a hands-on engineering seat; you direct the agent crew; you partner with the humans.

Direct the agentic testing team - define agent personas, dispatch patterns, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints for QA across TRACE.

Author the prompts, context contracts, and knowledge bases that drive the agents through test plan generation, regression authoring, defect triage, exploratory testing, and accessibility sweeps.

Build evaluation harnesses that measure agent output quality - false-positive rates on bug reports, regression coverage drift, flaky-test detection, eval-vs-production divergence - and tighten the loop sprint over sprint.

Curate what the agents produce - test plans, automated scripts, exploratory findings, regression results - and ship the best of it into the engineering pipeline with your stamp on it.

Hunt bugs through manual, automated, and agent-driven methods, and verify every agent-surfaced finding before it reaches the development team.

Own TRACE's quality posture as the SME on HVAC simulation correctness, ASHRAE compliance reporting, EnergyPlus integration behavior, and cross-repo regression risk.

Partner with developers and Product Owners on test coverage decisions, release readiness, and quality strategy.

Run regression, functional, and data tests across the .NET 10.0 backend, Blazor frontend, PostgreSQL schema, and EnergyPlus calculation engine.

Design adversarial verification workflows - parallel agents that try to refute a test result before it's trusted.

Curate the agent learning loop - capture recurring failure patterns, encode them into spec rules, and feed them back into agent knowledge bases so the same defect class is caught earlier next sprint.

Translate customer-impact reports into agent-runnable test scenarios and explain quality posture to non-technical stakeholders without hand-waving.

5+ years in software quality assurance, with a real track record of shipping tested software.

1+ year hands-on with LLM-based agents, AI coding assistants, or multi-agent systems in a production or near-production workflow.

Strong test-design instincts across unit, integration, system, functional, and exploratory layers; comfortable owning test plans, defect lifecycle, regression strategy, and release gating.

Hands-on experience with AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot Workspace, or equivalent) and the Anthropic / OpenAI APIs.

Working knowledge of prompt engineering, structured outputs (JSON Schema), tool use, and multi-agent orchestration (parallel/pipeline/judge-panel/adversarial-verify).

Comfort designing evals and treating eval results as a first-class quality metric.

Bias toward human-in-the-loop verification - never trusting agent output blindly.

Ability to read and modify production code in C#, Python, or JavaScript - not just test code.

Experience with GitHub Actions testing pipelines.

Working knowledge of Jira (or equivalent) and testing tools like Playwright, BUnit, xUnit / NUnit.

Strong written and oral communication; able to explain agent behavior, eval results, and quality posture in plain language.

Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related discipline (or equivalent experience - we care more about what you've shipped than where you studied).

Familiarity with C#, .NET 10.0, Blazor, ASP.NET Core, Razor, plus the usual web stack (JavaScript / TypeScript / CSS / HTML).

Working knowledge of PostgreSQL and EF Core, including database-aware test design (cascade-delete chains, FK integrity, schema migration testing).

Background in building energy simulation, EnergyPlus, ASHRAE 140 software testing, ASHRAE 90.1 / 62.1 / 169 compliance reporting, or HVAC equipment sizing workflows.

Agile / Scrum experience.

This is an on-site role so you can pair tightly with the TRACE engineering team and the agent crew you're directing. Expect a fast feedback loop, candid technical conversation, and a team that takes both craft and outcomes seriously.

We offer competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits and programs that help our employees thrive in both their professional and personal lives. We are proud of our winning culture which is inclusive and respectful at its core. We share a passion for serving customers, caring for others, and boldly challenging what's possible for a sustainable world.

We are committed to achieving workforce diversity reflective of our communities. We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, pregnancy, age, marital status, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any legally protected status.

Annual Base Salary Range or Hourly Base Pay Range:

Compensation Type:

Incentive Eligible:

Sales Commission Eligible:

Disclaimer: We strive to provide competitive compensation for this position, tailored to a variety of factors. The actual compensation will depend on elements such as seniority, merit, geographic location, education, experience, travel requirements, and union designation. Our compensation range is generally based on the national average for the country. Additionally, benefits may vary depending on the region, business alignment, union involvement, and employee status.

Thrive at work and at home:

• Benefits kick in on DAY ONE for you and your family, including health insurance and holistic wellness programs that include generous incentives - WE DARE TO CARE!
• Family building benefits include fertility coverage and adoption/surrogacy assistance.
• 401K match up to 6%, plus an additional 2% core contribution = up to 8% company contribution.
• Paid time off includes 15 vacation days, 9 paid holidays, 3 floating holidays, sick leave, and additional options to support volunteer and parental leave.
• Educational and training opportunities through company programs along with tuition assistance and student debt support.

Disclaimer: Benefit offerings may vary depending on Collective Bargaining Agreements and local/state regulations.

Safety Sensitive Role:

The company designates certain roles as Safety Sensitive. Safety Sensitive roles may require that you pass additional drug screening.

We offer competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits and programs. We are an equal opportunity employer; all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, pregnancy, age, marital status, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any legally protected status.