Senior QA Automation Engineer

Role Overview:

We are looking for a Senior QA Automation Engineer with a minimum of 7 years of software testing experience, including strong hands-on automation across web (Playwright) and mobile (Appium) platforms. The ideal candidate owns automation frameworks end to end, brings a strong testing-fundamentals background, and can independently drive quality strategy across product releases while mentoring the wider QA team.

Key Responsibilities:

- Understand project requirements and develop detailed test plans, test cases, test scenarios, and the corresponding automation strategy.

- Participate in requirement analysis, design discussions, and review meetings to provide input on testability, risk, and automation feasibility.

- Decide what belongs in automation vs. manual/exploratory testing and define the regression scope for each release.

Automation Framework Ownership:

- Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks using Playwright (TypeScript/JavaScript) for web and Appium for Android/iOS.

- Establish and enforce framework conventions - page/domain helpers, fixtures, test data builders, reusable utilities - so the suite stays maintainable as it grows.

- Integrate automated suites into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins / Bitbucket Pipelines / GitHub Actions) with scheduled runs, parallel execution, and actionable reporting.

- Own suite health: investigate and eliminate flaky tests, reduce execution time, and keep pass-rate signal trustworthy.

- Execute and maintain runs on real devices and cross-browser grids (e.g. BrowserStack / Sauce Labs / device farms).

Test Execution:

- Perform functional, integration, system, regression, and API testing on web and mobile applications.

- Execute both manual and automated test cases; convert high-value repeatable manual cases into automated coverage.

- Validate backend behaviour through API testing (REST) and SQL database checks.

Defect Management:

- Work closely with developers to reproduce, analyze, and resolve issues; drive them to closure.

- Distinguish genuine product defects from test/environment issues before raising them - never mask a real bug by adjusting a test.

- Maintain clear, reproducible documentation of bugs, test results, and root-cause findings.

Reporting & Communication:

- Prepare test reports summarizing test activities, automation coverage, outcomes, and quality metrics.

- Communicate test progress, release readiness, risks, and results to stakeholders and leadership.

- Publish periodic quality dashboards (coverage, defect trends, automation pass rate, execution time).

Collaboration & Mentoring:

- Collaborate with cross-functional teams including developers, product managers, and business analysts to ensure software quality.

- Review automation code written by other QA engineers and enforce coding and design standards.

- Mentor junior and mid-level QA engineers on automation practices, debugging techniques, and testing fundamentals.

Required Skills:

Automation:

- 4+ years of hands-on automation experience, with strong command of Playwright for web UI automation.

- Hands-on experience with Appium for native/hybrid mobile app automation on Android and iOS.

- Proficiency in TypeScript / JavaScript (or strong equivalent OOP language experience with willingness to work in TypeScript).

- Has built an automation framework from the ground up, not only added scripts to one that already existed.

- Experience with API test automation and response/schema validation.

- Working knowledge of Git and branching workflows; comfortable raising and reviewing pull requests.

Testing Techniques:

- Expert in test case design, test execution, and defect reporting.

- Strong understanding of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and software testing life cycle (STLC).

- Solid grasp of test design techniques - boundary value analysis, equivalence partitioning, decision tables, risk-based testing.

Tools & Technologies:

- Bug tracking tools such as JIRA, Bugzilla, or similar.

- Test management tools such as TestRail, Zephyr, BrowserStack Test Management, or similar.

- CI/CD tooling - Jenkins, Bitbucket Pipelines, GitHub Actions, or similar.

- Cloud device/browser labs such as BrowserStack or Sauce Labs.

Domain Knowledge:

- Proven experience testing both web and mobile applications.

- Good working knowledge of SQL for database testing and data validation.

- Familiarity with performance or security testing basics is an added advantage.

Good to Have:

- Experience introducing contract testing, service virtualisation, or API mocking to de-risk dependent services.

- Performance testing experience with JMeter, k6, or Gatling, and the ability to interpret results.

- Security testing basics - OWASP Top 10 awareness, and use of tools such as OWASP ZAP or Burp Suite.

- Experience with visual regression and accessibility automation (Percy, axe-core, Lighthouse).

- Docker/Kubernetes familiarity for containerised test execution.

- Experience defining and tracking quality KPIs - escaped-defect rate, automation ROI, mean time to triage.

- Test data management strategy at scale - seeding, masking, and environment isolation.

- Experience defining a shift-left or in-sprint automation model and getting a team to adopt it.

- Exposure to observability tooling (Grafana, Datadog, Sentry) for correlating test failures with system behaviour.

- Experience applying AI-assisted tooling to test generation, failure triage, or code review, with judgement about where it should not be trusted.

Soft Skills:

- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; able to root-cause an issue rather than report only the symptom.

- Strong attention to detail and commitment to delivering high-quality results.

- Good communication and interpersonal skills; able to present quality status confidently to stakeholders.

- Ownership mindset - takes responsibility for release quality end to end.

Collaboration and communication:

- Proactive monitoring and collaboration with team members and internal departments are necessary to guarantee seamless operations at the Centre.

How the role interacts with other teams or individuals:

- Ensure effective communication and coordination between different cross functional teams to align the technology function with overall business goals.

Skills

Playwright Testing, Appium, API Testing, Mobile Testing, Automation Testing, Testing, Software Quality Assurance, Manual Testing