Playwright Engineer (Contract)
First seen by Alion on Oct 22, 2026.
Responsibillities
* Define and execute end to end test strategies covering UI workflows, backend APIs, integrations and agentic interfaces.
* Test conversational and agentic behaviour including multi turn context, tool selection, tool inputs and outputs, state transitions, retries, timeouts, handoffs, approvals and recovery from partial failure.
* Validate GenAI responses for task completion, grounding, relevance, consistency, citation behaviour and safe failure, while recognising that outputs can be non deterministic.
* Perform functional, integration, regression, exploratory, negative, resilience and basic performance testing across application layers.
* Design API tests for contracts, authentication, authorisation, validation, error handling, idempotency, rate limits and downstream failures.
* Test UI behaviour across browsers and realistic user journeys, including loading states, interrupted sessions, feedback capture, accessibility basics and clear error communication.
* Create and maintain test data, reusable test scenarios and traceable evidence suitable for enterprise release governance.
* Use logs, traces, request and response payloads and observability tools to isolate defects and distinguish application, model, data, integration and platform issues.
* Automate the tests that materially reduce cycle time, manual effort or production risk, and keep unstable or low value scenarios out of the automation suite.
* Communicate defects and quality risks clearly to engineers, product owners, GenAI specialists, security teams and business stakeholders.
* Provide an evidence based release recommendation, including known limitations, residual risks and areas requiring monitoring.
* Partner with product owners, business users, architects, engineers and GenAI specialists to define the problem, target user journeys and expected business outcomes.
* Analyse proposed GenAI use cases and determine where deterministic application logic, retrieval, workflow orchestration, tool using agents or human approval should be used.
Core Requirements
* 5 to 8 years of experience in software quality engineering, test engineering or a similar hands on role covering complex applications.
* Strong experience testing web user interfaces, backend services and REST APIs.
* Hands on ability with API tools and automation frameworks such as Postman, REST Assured, pytest, Playwright, Cypress, Selenium or equivalent.
* Working knowledge of Java, Python, JavaScript or TypeScript sufficient to build, review and troubleshoot test automation.
* Strong test analysis skills, including requirements review, risk assessment, boundary analysis, negative testing and traceability.
* Experience validating distributed systems and integrations, including asynchronous processing, queues, batch jobs and downstream dependencies.
* Ability to inspect logs, traces, network calls, payloads and database records to identify the actual failure point.
* Experience with Git, pull requests, CI/CD pipelines, test reporting and defect management tools.
* Understanding of security and privacy testing fundamentals, including access control, sensitive data handling, input validation and auditability.
* Strong stakeholder communication and the confidence to challenge weak designs, vague expected outcomes and premature release decisions.
Skills
application performance testing, CITE, Failure Rate, Used Equipment, Release Planning, Software Defect Management, Test Data setup, UI testing, User Journeys, Test Cycles, Authentication, Regression, Test Strategy, Verbal Behavior, Error Handling, Monitoring defects