Automation Lead

Role & responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of scalable test automation frameworks for web, API, mobile, and enterprise applications.
• Define and execute the overall automation strategy, roadmap, standards, and best practices across projects.
• Develop robust automated test scripts using tools such as Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, REST Assured, Appium, or equivalent technologies.
• Design and maintain automation frameworks using Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or other appropriate programming languages.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or similar tools.
• Drive continuous improvement of test coverage, execution speed, reliability, maintainability, and automation ROI.
• Lead API, UI, regression, smoke, integration, end-to-end, and cross-browser automation initiatives.
• Implement parallel and distributed test execution to reduce test-cycle duration.
• Collaborate closely with developers, product managers, business analysts, DevOps engineers, and other QA teams throughout the SDLC.
• Review requirements and identify opportunities for automation, quality improvement, and early defect prevention.
• Perform code reviews and establish coding, framework, and automation quality standards.
• Troubleshoot automation failures, identify root causes, and improve framework stability.
• Manage test data, test environments, configuration, and automation dependencies.
• Establish QA metrics, dashboards, reporting, and automation health indicators for stakeholders.
• Mentor and technically guide QA engineers and automation engineers.

Preferred candidate profile:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 5 to 10 years of overall software testing/QA experience, with significant hands-on experience in test automation.
• Proven experience leading or mentoring QA automation teams.
• Strong programming experience in Java, Python, or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Strong hands-on expertise with Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or equivalent automation frameworks.
• Strong experience in API automation and testing, preferably using REST Assured, Postman/Newman, Karate, or similar tools.
• Experience designing and implementing scalable, maintainable automation frameworks from the ground up.
• Strong knowledge of Page Object Model, data-driven, keyword-driven, BDD, and hybrid framework architectures.
• Experience integrating automated tests with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps tools.
• Working knowledge of Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Git, Docker, and cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure.
• Good understanding of SQL, databases, REST APIs, JSON, XML, and microservices architecture.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies and modern software development practices.
• Exposure to mobile automation using Appium is an advantage.
• Exposure to performance testing tools such as JMeter or Gatling is an advantage.
• Understanding of cloud-based testing, containerization, and distributed test execution.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted software testing and AI coding tools is highly desirable.