Lead Software Development Engineer - Test
First seen by Alion on Sep 1, 2026.
About the Role :
As an SDET3, you'll act as a quality leader within the engineering org, driving large-scale test automation, building systems that improve reliability, and raising the overall bar of engineering practices. Beyond hands-on test design and automation, you will influence architecture decisions, champion quality metrics, and create frameworks that scale across pods and teams.
A key part of this role is to build and evolve quality platforms, tools, and developer-facing capabilities that make testing faster, easier, and seamlessly integrated into the SDLC. You'll help shift quality from a gated activity to a built-in engineering capability. This role requires strong technical depth, leadership in problem-solving, and the ability to mentor and coach other engineers to embed quality as a culture.
Responsibilities :
- Own and evolve automation frameworks and test infrastructure that scale with product growth and complexity.
- Partner with engineering leadership to define quality strategy, KPIs, and guardrails across pods.
- Architect, design, and implement automation solutions for end-to-end testing across UI, APIs, services, and integrations.
- Lead root cause analysis of complex production issues and drive initiatives to prevent recurrence.
- Establish best practices in test data management, mocking/stubbing, contract testing, and observability in QA.
- Drive continuous improvement of CI/CD pipelines for faster and more reliable releases.
- Mentor, coach, and upskill SDET1/2s, setting technical direction and reviewing automation design.
- Collaborate with product managers, architects, and developers to influence design and architecture decisions for testability and resilience.
- Identify gaps in automation or coverage and lead efforts to reduce flakiness, improve coverage, and cut down customer-reported bugs.
What we're looking for :
- 6+ years of experience in software test automation and quality engineering.
- Strong coding proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, or Java, with the ability to design frameworks from scratch.
- Deep expertise in automation tools (e.g., Playwright, Cypress, Jest, Mocha, PyTest, Selenium).
- Proven track record of building and scaling automation frameworks for large-scale distributed systems.
- Hands-on experience with microservices, APIs, GraphQL.
- Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and cloud-native infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure).
- Experience in leading quality initiatives and influencing engineering culture.
Nice to have :
- Experience with performance and load testing at scale (e.g., Locust, JMeter, k6).
- Knowledge of security testing practices and tools.
- Familiarity with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry).
- Experience in shaping testing strategy in startups or scaling products from early stage to enterprise-level.
- Contributions to open-source test automation frameworks.
Skills
Java, Python, Selenium, Playwright Testing, Locust.io, JMeter, Automation Testing, Software Quality Assurance, SDET, Cypress