Senior/Principal QA Automation Engineer
First seen by Alion on Oct 6, 2026.
Senior / Principal QA Automation Engineer - AI Implementations & Enterprise Solutions.
Location : Pune / Hybrid.
Experience : 10 - 16 Years.
Notice Period : Immediate to 30 Days Preferred.
About the Role :
We are looking for an experienced and hands-on Senior / Principal QA Automation Engineer who can take ownership of quality across enterprise and AI implementation projects. The person should be strong in test automation, API and integration testing and should be able to understand the overall solution, define the right testing approach, identify risks and drive quality through the project lifecycle. We are looking for someone who can remain hands-on while also guiding the QA team and working closely with engineering, business and client stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities :
- Lead end-to-end QA activities across enterprise and AI implementation projects.
- Understand business requirements, functional flows and solution architecture and translate them into an effective test strategy.
- Define test coverage across functional, regression, integration, API, database and end-to-end testing.
- Design, build and maintain scalable automation frameworks using Selenium, TestNG/JUnit and Java or equivalent technologies.
- Develop and maintain API automation using RestAssured or similar frameworks.
- Perform API and microservices testing using tools such as Postman and Swagger.
- Perform backend and database validation using SQL.
- Test end-to-end business flows across UI, APIs, databases, AI services and downstream systems.
- Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines and establish appropriate quality gates.
- Define regression strategy and identify the right areas for automation.
- Manage defects, participate in root-cause discussions and provide clear visibility into overall product quality.
- Provide QA estimates, test plans, execution status, quality metrics and release-readiness inputs.
- Work closely with Business Analysts, Developers, Architects, AI/Data Engineers and Product teams.
- Participate in requirement and solution discussions and identify gaps and testability concerns early.
- Mentor QA engineers and drive good automation and testing practices within the team.
- Participate in client discussions and clearly communicate testing approach, quality risks, defects and release readiness.
Required Skills :
- 10 - 16 years of software testing experience with strong hands-on automation experience.
- Strong experience with Selenium WebDriver and TestNG/JUnit.
- Good hands-on programming experience in Java and/or Python.
- Strong API testing and API automation experience.
- Experience with RestAssured, Postman, Swagger or similar tools.
- Strong SQL and database testing skills.
- Experience designing, building or significantly enhancing automation frameworks.
- Experience testing APIs, microservices and integrated enterprise applications.
- Experience with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps or equivalent.
- Good understanding of Agile/Scrum delivery.
- Strong analytical, troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to independently own QA activities for a project.
- Good communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to guide and mentor other QA engineers while remaining hands-on.
AI / GenAI Testing Experience :
Hands-on experience testing AI/GenAI-enabled applications is preferred, including one or more of the following :
1. Generative AI / LLM applications.
2. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
3. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants.
4. AI agents and workflow-based solutions.
5. OCR / Intelligent Document Processing.
6. AI-powered decision or recommendation solutions.
7. AI-enabled APIs and enterprise integrations.
Candidates with AI/GenAI testing experience should have exposure to areas such as :
1. Response accuracy and relevance.
2. Groundedness and hallucination.
3. Prompt and input variations.
4. RAG retrieval quality.
5. Business-rule validation.
6. Evaluation datasets and expected outcomes.
7. Negative and edge-case testing.
8. Guardrail validation.
9. Prompt injection and unintended behaviour.
10. AI service and integration failures.
11. Response performance and reliability.
Good to Have :
- Banking / BFSI or Financial Services domain experience.
- Experience building automation frameworks from scratch.
- Performance testing using JMeter, LoadRunner or equivalent.
- Cloud-based application testing.
- Docker / Kubernetes exposure.
- Experience testing data pipelines.
- Experience with AI/LLM evaluation frameworks or tools.
- Experience mentoring or leading a QA team.
What We Are Looking For :
We are looking for someone who is still hands-on, but can also take ownership of testing for a project. The person should be able to understand how the solution works, identify the major quality risks, define the testing approach, decide what should be automated and drive testing through to release. The ideal candidate will bring together strong QA fundamentals, hands-on automation, AI/GenAI testing exposure and the maturity to lead quality across enterprise implementation projects. BFSI or Financial Services experience would be an added advantage, but is not mandatory for this role.
Skills
Software Quality Assurance, Testing, Automation Testing, API Testing, Integration Testing, RestAssured, Selenium, Java, POSTMAN, AI/ML Testing