Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Summary - About KUDA

Kuda, which means ‘love’ in Shona, is more than a fintech - it’s a movement to make financial services accessible, affordable, and truly rewarding for every African.

Backed by over $100 million from some of the world’s most respected investors, we’re building a smarter alternative to traditional banking - offering seamless money transfers, business banking, and instant access to credit, all through your device.

At Kuda, we don’t just build products - we build people. We share the love in how we collaborate, carry everyone along as we grow, break boundaries to challenge what’s possible, and show up every day committed to doing better.

If you’re driven by purpose, excited by impact, and ready to help redefine the future of finance in Africa, you’ll feel right at home here.

Role Overview

At Kuda, we are dedicated to delivering a seamless, reliable, and highly secure digital financial experience for our customers. As a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), you will be the ultimate guardian of our platform’s quality and reliability. You won’t just be writing scripts; you will be writing robust code to build the automated infrastructure that ensures our customers' money and data are always safe and accessible.

You will sit at the critical intersection of software engineering and quality assurance. Your mission is to architect comprehensive test automation frameworks, champion a "shift-left" testing culture, and integrate quality gates seamlessly into our CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Test Architecture & Frameworks: Design, build, and scale robust, maintainable test automation frameworks from the ground up for our backend microservices (APIs), web platforms, and mobile applications (iOS and Android).
• Comprehensive Automation: Drive functional, integration, and end-to-end automation testing. Write clean, high-quality code (e.g., in Java, Python, C#, or JavaScript/TypeScript) to automate complex financial user journeys.
• Pipeline Integration (CI/CD): Embed continuous testing into our DevOps pipelines. Ensure that every code commit is rigorously and automatically tested for functionality and stability before reaching production.
• Performance & Security Testing: Design and execute automated performance, load, and security tests to proactively identify bottlenecks and vulnerabilities, ensuring our systems can handle massive transaction volumes securely.
• Shift-Left Quality & Collaboration: Partner closely with software engineers, product managers, and QA analysts during the design phase. Define testability requirements and ensure quality is built-in from day one rather than tested-in later.
• Defect Triage & Root Cause Analysis: Investigate complex issues, debug code, and work alongside developers to trace defects down to the root cause, implementing preventative automation to stop regressions.
• Mentorship & Best Practices: Continuously evaluate modern testing tools and methodologies (e.g., Appium, Playwright, JMeter, Axios/RestAssured, MySql). Mentor junior team members and cultivate a culture where quality is a shared engineering responsibility.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in a dedicated SDET or Software Automation role.
• Advanced proficiency in Java and JavaScript, with working knowledge of C# and Groovy.
• Hands-on experience with web and mobile automation tools including:
• Selenium
• Playwright
• Cypress
• Appium
• Strong experience with API and data testing, including making API/HTTP requests using:
• Rest Assured
• Axios
• Jest
• OkHttp
• Apache HttpClient
• Experience managing database connections using HikariCP or JDBC.
• Proficiency in automation framework design patterns, particularly:
• Keyword-Driven Testing
• Page Object Model (POM)
• Familiarity with build and CI/CD tools including:
• Maven
• TestNG
• Jest
• Jenkins
• Azure DevOps Pipelines
• Experience with test reporting and test management tools such as:
• Extent Reports
• Azure/Assure Reports
• Jira
• Test management integrations

Soft Skills & Professional Attributes

• Independent Ownership: Proactively identify improvements and fix issues without constant supervision.
• Knowledge Sharing: A "share the love" mentality-mentoring peers and documenting findings to elevate the team's technical bar.
• Collaborative Leadership: Aligning developers and Product Owners with the automation strategy to ensure collective success.
• Continuous Improvement: A "do things better every day" mindset focused on optimizing execution time and simplifying workflows.
• Strong Communication: Translating complex technical failures into clear, actionable insights for all stakeholders.

Benefits

Why join Kuda?

At Kuda, our people are the heart of our business, so we prioritise your welfare. We offer a wide range of competitive benefits in areas including but not limited to:

A great and upbeat work environment populated by a multinational team

Pension

Career Development & growth

Competitive annual leave plus bank holidays

Competitive paid time off (Parental, Moving day, Birthday, Study leave etc)

Group life insurance

Medical insurance

Well-fare package (Wedding, Compassionate and etc)

AwardCo.

Goalr - employee wellness app

Award winning L&D training

We are advocates of work-life balance, working in a hybrid in office schedule

Kuda is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Kuda is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent.

We don’t regard colour, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.