Lead Software Test Automation Engineer

Professional Experience: 10 to 16 Years

• Own test planning, test environment readiness, execution oversight, and ongoing progress reporting.
• Coordinate closely with testers and guide the transition of manual test scenarios into the automation suite.
• Provide continuous support for both manual and automated testing initiatives, including resource and workload coordination as needed.
• Participate in requirements elicitation and analysis from a QA/testing standpoint.
• Operate in a hybrid capacity with 70% individual contributor (hands-on automation/manual execution, framework improvements, defect validation) and 30% lead responsibilities (planning, coordination, stakeholder updates, and mentoring).
• Perform and drive code reviews / PR reviews for automation changes to ensure coding standards, test reliability, maintainability, and alignment with framework best practices.
• Accelerate automation delivery by leveraging AI-assisted development (e.g., GitHub Copilot), agentic automation approaches, and modern Playwright practices to improve speed and quality of test creation/maintenance.
• Mentor and upskill automation resources to effectively and responsibly use AI tools for automation development, troubleshooting, and framework enhancements.
• Drive and execute Proof of Concepts (POCs) to evaluate and adopt new automation tools/approaches (AI-assisted automation, Playwright enhancements, agentic workflows), and recommend rollout strategy based on outcomes.

Knowledge/skills and Experience:

. Requirements gathering/analysis in a QA role challenge and clarify requirements to ensure testability.

. Strong understanding of client business workflows, technology needs, test tools, and integration touchpoints across interfacing systems.

. Strong command of QA best practices, test design techniques, and end-to-end testing methodology.

. Review project artifacts (functional requirements, unit/integration plans, etc.) to identify gaps and ensure complete coverage.

. Validate technical and user documentation for correctness, usability, and procedural accuracy.

. Translate functional/technical specs into reusable manual and automated test scripts for new features and enhancements.

. Plan and execute full test cycles (smoke/sanity, functional, integration, regression) with high attention to detail.

. Strong OOP fundamentals with hands-on C#.NET development skills.

. UI automation with Selenium (Java / C#) and Playwright (TypeScript) API testing (validation + automation).

. PR/code review expertise for automation frameworks and suites enforce standards/quality gates and actively reduce flakiness and maintenance overhead.

. Accelerate automation using AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) for authoring, refactoring, debugging, Playwright fixes, and framework enhancements.

. Working knowledge of agentic automation concepts (AI-assisted workflows, scaffolding, intelligent triage/self-healing patterns) to improve productivity and stability.

. Mentor engineers on effective and responsible AI usage (prompting practices, secure use, maintainability, and review expectations).

. Drive POCs/technical evaluations document outcomes and recommend adoption based on quality impact, ROI, and delivery goals.

Key Performance measure

• Stable releases with measurable reduction in hotfixes, escaped defects, and defect re-open rate.
• Increased automation coverage of critical business flows (smoke + regression), with coverage growth tracked sprint-over-sprint / release-over-release.
• Reduced automation flakiness via proactive triage, root-cause analysis, and stabilization practices (robust sync/waits, test-data isolation, environment health checks, and controlled retry strategy where appropriate).
• Improved CI/CD signal-to-noise by sustaining a strong pass rate, minimizing false failures, and enabling faster pipeline feedback.
• Lower automation maintenance effort through better test design, higher reusability/modularization, and strong PR quality gates/coding standards.
• Higher automation throughput and improved cycle time using AI-assisted development and Playwright/framework optimizations.

Other Key Competencies:

. Strong verbal/written communication and presentation skills customer-facing delivery and documentation experience.
. Self-driven and independent balances strategic ownership with execution detail.
. Effective in ambiguous environments with multiple priorities and stakeholders.
. Proven cross-functional collaboration (Sales, Support, Consulting, Product, Engineering).
. Strong analytical/problem-solving skills with a focus on practical, efficient solutions.
. Thrives on complex problem solving and continuous improvement/innovation.
. Performs well under pressure manages customer expectations and tight timelines.
. Customer-focused, quality-first mindset with strong attention to detail.
. Strong documentation capability.
. Manual testing skills essential.

Our Interview Practices