Lead Test Automation Engineer

Beyond adapting automation framework for department- and product-specific implementation, you will contribute directly to framework and suite code, own design and architecture decisions. You hold technical decisions within the department: implementation approach, design reviews, and release gating criteria. Decisions on roadmap priority across products, headcount, and budget sit with the department director.

Mission / Expected Outcomes

• Own the department automation roadmap, prioritizing across products supporting deliveries to client and regulatory requirement within the framework platform sets
• Own the QA process for the department coverage strategy, test levels, product prioritization, and defect lifecycle and ensure test evidence and traceability stand up to regulatory and client-facing scrutiny.
• Contribute hands-on to framework implementation, high-impact suites, and hard debugging while retaining the technical depth to make and defend architecture decisions.
• Build and scale the TAE bench through mentoring, hiring involvement, and structured skill-gap closure.
• Represent test automation capability and risk posture to engineering and product leadership across the department.

Key Responsibilities

• Department Roadmap Ownership & Standards
• Design and build department- and product-level automation implementation on top of platform framework contributing directly to, framework extensions and high-impact test suites.
• Own architecture and design decisions, including structure, reusability patterns, and test-data strategy; hold technical decisions on implementation approach.
• Own coverage strategy by setting the critical coverage floor for each product must meet and defining the trigger conditions for expanding coverage
• Own test case management standards across the department: library structure, execution records, and traceability from requirement through test case to execution result, so test evidence withstands regulatory and client scrutiny.
• Set test data and environment standards for the department, ensuring they are version-controlled, reproducible, and safe for parallel execution.
• Govern the defect lifecycle: triage discipline, severity and priority definitions, fix validation, and accountability for reopened defects.
• Lead resolution of complex technical problems related to flaky suites, environment instability, pipeline failures.
• Drive and coordinate the automation roadmap across all products in department scope, balancing short-term testing needs against long-term technical debt and strategic direction
• Uphold platform standards for coding conventions, documentation, and automation benchmarks; roll out its framework and tooling decisions for department context, and recommend new adoption where choices need to scale across products.
• Define and track department-level quality metrics such as defect escape rate, coverage, flake rate, execution cycle time, reporting automation and using it to drive process change.
• Technical Leadership, Mentorship & Team Development
• Provide technical leadership across the automation team at the department level by mentoring engineers, reviewing automation code and design, and fostering a high-performance engineering culture across product teams.
• Act as technical approver on automation design and framework-extension proposals from product teams within the department.
• Identify formal training needs and coordinate upskilling paths for TAEs across products.
• Partner with Platform Tech leads to defining the department's automation tech stack direction.
• Own hiring involvement for TAE roles department-wide: interviews, take-home review calibration, and leveling decisions.
• Consult and advise on automation initiatives for any product in the department — reviewing compliance with QA Platform standards and flagging gaps for the product team to close.
• Champion continuous improvement and knowledge sharing at organization and department level.

Technical Scope

• Automation Tools: Playwright, Cypress, Katalon, Selenium, Appium, Postman, Karate or equivalent
• Programming: Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, C, C#, or similar
• Testing Expertise: Strong depth in UI(Web/mobile) and API/backend automation, with other specialization security, performance
• QA Process: Test case management and defect tracking, coverage and traceability practice, and test evidence for audited environments
• Databases: Strong SQL for backend and transactional validation
• CI/CD: Bitbucket, Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps or similar, with pipeline standards enforcement
• Domain Advantage: Fintech, banking, financial institutions, cards & payments, or regulated environments
• Familiarity with:
• Modern tech stacks and Agile methodologies
• SDLC, STLC, and software testing principles
• Automation frameworks, observability tools, and QA engineering best practices

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field
• 7+ years in Quality Assurance with at least 5 years in Test Automation or software engineering with a testing focus
• Proven ability to design and build automation frameworks for complex, large-scale systems, with current hands-on coding capability
• Proven track record leading automation roadmap and standards enforcement across more than one product or platform
• Experience defining QA process — coverage strategy, entry and exit criteria, defect governance — for more than one product or team
• Experience in fintech, banking, or payment technologies is a strong advantage

Professional Certifications (Optional)

• ISTQB-CTFL (Certified Tester Foundation Level)
• ISTQB-CT-TAE (Certified Tester Test Automation Engineer)

Competencies & Skills

• Proven ability to lead and manage a team of test automation engineers, including through indirect reporting lines
• Experience defining QA process – coverage strategy, automation governance, test case and defect management for more than one team
• Strong strategic thinking with demonstrated ability to align automation goals with business objectives across multiple products
• Experience leading automation roadmap against standards and processes at department scale across multiple products
• Ability to prioritize automation efforts across competing products based on ROI and risk
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management across engineering, product, and leadership
• High accountability, ownership, and results-driven attitude