Staff SDET

About the Company
We are looking for a highly experienced Staff Software Development Engineer in Test (Staff SDET) to lead the design, evolution, and reliability of our domain-level test infrastructure. This is a senior individual contributor role where you will own the architecture, automation frameworks, CI/CD quality gates, and engineering standards that enable high-quality software delivery at scale.
About the Role
As a Staff SDET, you will remain deeply hands-on—building automation frameworks, solving complex infrastructure challenges, improving pipeline reliability, and mentoring engineers across the organisation. You will work closely with Staff Quality Engineers (QE) and Staff Software Engineers (SE) to ensure quality is engineered into every stage of the software development lifecycle. Your work will directly impact engineering velocity by reducing regression cycle times, improving automation reliability, and enabling AI-driven testing practices.
Responsibilities
Test Infrastructure & Automation
Own the architecture and long-term evolution of the domain's automation frameworks.
Design, build, maintain, and enhance scalable test automation solutions for UI, API, database, and microservices.
Develop reusable automation components and infrastructure used across multiple engineering teams.
Define and maintain automation standards, coding guidelines, and framework best practices.
Maintain infrastructure documentation, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and automation roadmaps.
CI/CD & Quality Engineering
Design and manage CI/CD quality gates to ensure reliable software releases.
Continuously improve pipeline stability, automation execution time, and deployment confidence.
Monitor automation health and proactively eliminate flaky tests and unstable pipelines.
Establish measurable reliability targets for automation infrastructure.
Engineer security, compliance, and validation checks directly into deployment pipelines.
AI-Driven Test Engineering
Drive adoption of AI-assisted software testing and automation.
Build infrastructure that enables AI agents to generate, execute, analyse, and maintain automated tests.
Continuously evaluate emerging AI testing technologies and implement best practices across the engineering organisation.
Engineering Leadership
Serve as the technical authority for test automation within your domain.
Lead architectural discussions and drive long-term engineering decisions.
Mentor SDETs and Software Engineers on automation design, framework development, and testing best practices.
Conduct code reviews and maintain high engineering standards.
Promote testability, contract testing, and quality-first engineering practices.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Partner closely with:
Staff Software Engineers
Staff Quality Engineers
Product Management
DevOps & Platform Engineering
Security & Compliance teams
Continuous Improvement
Reduce regression cycle time through intelligent automation.
Measure automation effectiveness using engineering metrics.
Track automation debt and drive continuous improvements.
Analyse production defects and continuously strengthen automation coverage.
Support business-critical releases and resolve high-priority production pipeline issues when required.
What Success Looks Like
Stable, scalable, and maintainable automation infrastructure adopted across engineering teams.
Significant reduction in regression execution time and faster software delivery.
Near-zero false-positive CI/CD quality gate failures.
High automation reliability with measurable improvements in pipeline health.
AI-powered automation integrated into engineering workflows.
Well-documented frameworks, standards, and architectural decisions.
Strong mentoring culture resulting in the growth of future automation leaders.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
8–12+ years of experience in Software Testing, Quality Engineering, or Test Automation.
Extensive experience designing and owning enterprise-scale automation frameworks.
Strong programming experience in Java, C#, Python, or JavaScript/TypeScript.
Expertise with UI automation tools such as Selenium, Playwright, or Cypress.
Strong API automation experience using REST Assured, Postman, Karate, or equivalent.
Hands-on experience with SQL and database validation.
Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and contract testing.
Deep knowledge of CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or GitLab CI.
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Experience integrating automation into DevSecOps pipelines.
Proven ability to reduce regression execution time through scalable automation.
Experience driving technical decisions and influencing engineering teams without direct authority.
Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with experience creating technical documentation and architectural decision records (ADRs).
Preferred Qualifications
Experience working within FinTech, Payments, Banking, Lending, or other regulated industries.
Experience with AI-assisted software testing and intelligent automation platforms.
Knowledge of performance and load testing tools such as JMeter, k6, or Gatling.
Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools including Splunk, Grafana, Kibana, or Elastic Stack.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).
Master's degree or advanced technical qualifications are advantageous.

Work arrangement
No