AI Automation Test Engineer - Playwright (Web & Mobile)

Job Summary

We are seeking an AI Automation Test Engineer with strong hands-on Playwright expertise to build, scale, and maintain intelligent test automation for web and mobile applications. This role has a specific mandate: migrate and modernise existing Java-based Selenium test suites to Playwright (TypeScript/JavaScript), while embedding AI-assisted techniques (AI-generated test cases, self-healing locators, MCP-enabled tooling, LLM-based test data and failure triage) into the day-to-day QA workflow.

The ideal candidate has already led or contributed materially to a Java Selenium Playwright migration, can quantify the outcome (execution time, flakiness, maintenance effort), and is comfortable using AI tooling as a force multiplier rather than a novelty.

Role & responsibilities

Playwright Automation

• Design, develop, and maintain end-to-end automation suites using Playwright with TypeScript/JavaScript across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
• Build scalable framework architecture Page Object Model / fixtures, reusable components, config-driven environments, parallel and sharded execution.
• Implement API testing within Playwright (request context) alongside UI coverage, plus Postman/Newman where required.
• Use Playwright's tracing, video, screenshot, and network interception/mocking capabilities to make failures diagnosable on the first pass.
• Implement visual regression and accessibility checks (e.g. Playwright snapshots, axe-core integration).

Selenium Playwright Migration

• Audit the existing Java-based Selenium suites: assess coverage, redundancy, flakiness, and business criticality to define migration scope and sequencing.
• Define the migration strategy and roadmap wave planning, coexistence approach, and criteria for rewrite vs. retire vs. defer.
• Convert Java Selenium test scripts, locator strategies, waits, and utilities into TypeScript/JavaScript Playwright idioms (auto-waiting, web-first assertions, locators over raw selectors) a cross-language rewrite, not a line-by-line port.
• Re-map Java-side supporting layers (TestNG/JUnit structures, Maven/Gradle build config, custom utilities, reporting hooks) to their Playwright/Node equivalents.
• Run both suites in parallel during transition and reconcile results to prove functional equivalence before Selenium decommissioning.
• Report migration KPIs: coverage parity, execution time reduction, flakiness rate, maintenance effort saved.

AI-Enabled Quality Engineering

• Use AI tooling to accelerate test case generation, test data synthesis, and script scaffolding from requirements, user stories, or Figma designs.
• Work with MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers and AI agent frameworks to enable AI-driven test execution, exploration, and reporting.
• Implement self-healing locators and AI-assisted failure triage to reduce false positives and manual analysis time.
• Apply AI to log/defect clustering, root-cause suggestion, and risk-based regression selection.
• Critically validate all AI-generated output — accountability for correctness stays with the engineer.

Mobile Automation

• Automate Android and iOS applications using Appium (and Playwright for mobile web / responsive viewports).
• Execute across real devices, emulators/simulators, and cloud device farms (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, LambdaTest).
• Validate compatibility across OS versions, screen sizes, and form factors; ensure Google Play and Apple App Store guideline compliance.

CI/CD, Reporting & Collaboration

• Integrate suites into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI) with quality gates and scheduled regression runs.
• Containerise execution (Docker) and manage parallel/grid execution for speed at scale.
• Publish actionable reporting and QA metrics — pass rate, flakiness, coverage, defect leakage, mean time to detect.
• Manage defects end-to-end in Jira; drive clear reproduction steps and fast developer turnaround.
• Participate in sprint planning, refinement, daily stand-ups, and QA reviews in an Agile/Scrum environment; contribute to shift-left and test-first practices.
• Mentor junior QA engineers on Playwright and AI-assisted testing practices.

Preferred candidate profile

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, IT, or related field.
• 5 to 7 years of overall test automation experience, including at least 2 years hands-on Playwright in a production delivery context.
• Demonstrable experience migrating test scripts from Java Selenium to Playwright — able to walk through scope, approach, pitfalls, and measured outcomes.
• Strong programming ability in TypeScript/JavaScript, with a solid grasp of async/await patterns, Node tooling, and npm ecosystem.
• Working proficiency in Java — sufficient to read, interpret, and refactor existing Selenium/TestNG codebases during migration.
• Deep understanding of Selenium WebDriver — architecture, explicit/implicit waits, grid, and its limitations relative to Playwright.
• Practical experience applying AI/LLM tools to testing (test generation, script authoring, triage, self-healing) — including awareness of their failure modes.
• Exposure to MCP servers or comparable AI-agent tooling for test execution or orchestration.
• API testing proficiency — REST, JSON schema validation, auth flows, Postman.
• Mobile automation with Appium; working knowledge of Android Studio and Xcode basics.
• Git-based workflows, code review discipline, and CI/CD pipeline experience.
• Strong analytical, debugging, documentation, and stakeholder communication skills.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Playwright component testing; contract testing (Pact).
• Performance testing — k6, JMeter, Gatling; Lighthouse for web performance.
• Accessibility testing to WCAG 2.1 / 2.2 standards.
• Cloud platform familiarity (Azure, AWS, GCP) and observability tooling.
• Test management integration (Zephyr, Xray, TestRail) and BDD (Cucumber, Playwright-BDD).
• Security testing basics (OWASP Top 10 awareness).
• ISTQB certification or equivalent.