Description
What are we hiring for?
We are seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to join our engineering team, who operates as a strong software engineer and owns automation for complex, business-critical systems.
This role goes beyond writing test scripts. You will design and implement automation for high-risk system flows, build infrastructure required to test distributed services in isolation, and integrate AI assisted workflows into the automation lifecycle. You will also drive quality outcomes by understanding user needs, partnering with Product on business risk assessment, and strengthening observability, metrics, and testability practices across the team.
You are accountable for delivering reliable, scalable automation and quality insights that increase release confidence, reduce production risk, and elevate the entire team’s quality capabilities.
Key Responsibilities
Hands-On Automation Ownership
Design and implement automation for critical end-to-end system flows.
Build API, integration, and system level automation that runs reliably in CI.
Identify gaps in coverage across high-risk paths and close them.
Reduce flaky tests through systemic fixes.
Ensure automation provides strong signals and blocks real regressions.
Evaluate the ROI of existing tests and remove or refactor low value automation.
Exploratory Testing & Risk Discovery
Conduct structured exploratory testing to uncover emergent behaviors, systemic risks, and edge cases not captured by automated validation.
Use observability signals, logs, traces, and system knowledge to guide exploratory sessions.
Partner with Product and Engineering to identify business critical flows and risk areas.
Feed exploratory insights back into automation strategy and design decisions.
Test Architecture & System Design
Design strategies to test services independently of external dependencies.
Build and maintain service simulators, mocks, or contract testing systems.
Create reusable automation libraries and SDKs.
Improve test data strategy and environment stability.
Partner with engineers to improve testability and observability at design time.
Contribute to architectural discussions to ensure systems are testable, observable, and resilient by default.
Observability & Production Quality Signals
Contribute to defining and validating quality related SLOs and SLIsin collaboration with Engineering and Product.
Ensure appropriate monitoring, alerting, and dashboards exist to detect regressions and validate system health.
Use production telemetry to identify gaps in test coverage and failure patterns.
Partner with engineers to ensure logs, metrics, and traces support both debugging and validation.
Load, Performance & Resilience Testing
Integrate load, performance, and stress testing into CI/CD pipelines.
Validate system behavior under degradation, dependency failures, and high traffic scenarios.
Collaborate with engineers to identify bottlenecks and reliability risks early.
Security Quality Integration
Partner with security teams to integrate SAST/DAST, dependency scanning, and other security validation into the quality workflow.
Ensure automation covers critical security flows and misuse cases.
AI-Enabled Automation
Use AI tools to generate and maintain automation code responsibly.
Apply AI to expand edge case coverage and scenario variation.
Automate failure triage and flaky test analysis where feasible.
Continuously evaluate opportunities to reduce manual effort through intelligent tooling.
Quality Engineering Leadership
Champion a culture of quality across the team, enabling engineers to build and test more effectively.
Mentor engineers on automation design, testability, and quality best practices.
Lead quality workshops, risk assessments, and exploratory testing sessions.
Help define measurable quality metrics tied to system risk and customer outcomes.
Partner with Product to ensure acceptance criteria reflect user needs and business risk.
Accessibility, Compliance & Regulatory Quality
Ensure accessibility requirements are validated and integrated into automation where possible.
Support compliance related testing (e.g., data privacy, auditability, and regulatory constraints) in partnership with relevant stakeholders.
Identify gaps in compliance coverage and escalate appropriately.
Key Requirements
Required Qualifications
Strong programming skills in a production language.
Experience automating distributed systems.
Experience designing integration and end-to-end validation strategies.
Experience building service virtualization or contract testing solutions.
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines.
Ability to debug complex cross service defects.
Experience with observability tooling (logs, metrics, traces).
Experience conducting exploratory testing and risk based validation.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience building internal automation platforms.
Experience working with external service integrations.
Experience applying AI tools within engineering workflows.
Experience improving automation reliability at scale.
Experience with performance, resilience, or security testing.
Experience supporting definition of SLOs/SLIs and building quality dashboards.
Exposure to accessibility or regulatory validation practices.
What This Role Is Not
Not a manual only testing role.
Not limited to automation scripting.
Not a gatekeeper.
Not detached from hands-on engineering.
Not an automation only role without product and user understanding.
