Lead QA Automation Engineer

Position Overview:

As we continue modernizing and scaling our Subscribe SaaS platform, quality, reliability, and automated testing coverage are critical to supporting rapid feature delivery and platform stability. We are investing in expanding and strengthening our test automation capabilities to improve delivery confidence, execution predictability, and overall platform quality across complex enterprise workflows.

We are seeking a Lead Test Automation Engineer who will serve as both a hands-on technical contributor and a leader of a small automation engineering team. This player-coach role is ideal for an experienced automation engineer who thrives building scalable automation frameworks, mentoring engineers, and driving quality improvements across UI, API, and platform testing layers. This is a remote role requiring US Citizenship, with limited occasional travel.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, maintain, and improve automated testing solutions supporting complex enterprise SaaS workflows and platform services.
• Lead the design, evolution, and scalability of UI and API automation frameworks, ensuring high coverage, reliability, and maintainability.
• Own and continuously improve existing Page Object Model (POM) test automation frameworks.
• Lead and expand API test automation using RestAssured or equivalent technologies aligned with platform growth.
• Maintain and enhance test reporting and visibility using Allure or similar reporting platforms to provide actionable quality insights.
• Identify automation coverage gaps, execution reliability risks, and quality improvement opportunities common in enterprise-scale systems.
• Partner closely with DevOps teams to ensure automation suites scale effectively and run reliably within GitLab CI/CD pipelines and cloud-based testing environments.
• Provide technical leadership and direct management for a small team of automation engineers, including mentorship, performance guidance, and skill development.
• Collaborate with QA leadership to ensure alignment between automated and manual testing strategies and overall product quality coverage.
• Partner with Product Management and Engineering teams to understand business workflows, risk areas, and testing priorities.
• Provide leadership with clear reporting on automation progress, trends, metrics, and quality improvement initiatives.
• Recommend and introduce additional testing capabilities where appropriate, including performance, load, and reliability testing.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools to improve automation efficiency, coverage expansion, and maintainability.
• Ramp quickly and contribute meaningful automation improvements with minimal onboarding or oversight.
• Promote adoption of modern test automation, continuous testing, and quality engineering best practices across engineering teams.

What Success Looks Like

• Automation coverage expands across critical user workflows, APIs, and platform services, improving release confidence and quality visibility.
• Automation frameworks remain scalable, maintainable, and aligned with platform architecture evolution.
• Engineering and Product teams rely on automation metrics and reporting to make informed delivery decisions.
• Automation suites execute reliably within CI/CD pipelines, reducing release risk and manual testing dependency.
• Automation engineers are mentored, supported, and growing in technical capability and delivery effectiveness.
• Quality engineering practices are consistently adopted across teams and integrated into development workflows.

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years of overall software or quality engineering experience.
• 8+ years of hands-on test automation experience, primarily using Java and Selenium or comparable frameworks.
• Strong hands-on experience with Java-based automation development.
• Strong experience implementing and maintaining API automation using RestAssured or equivalent frameworks.
• Deep experience designing and maintaining Page Object Model (POM) automation frameworks.
• Experience implementing automation reporting solutions such as Allure or comparable reporting platforms.
• Proven experience supporting enterprise SaaS platforms with complex business workflows and UI-heavy application layers.
• Experience working within CI/CD environments and automated testing pipelines.
• Demonstrated experience operating independently and delivering high-impact automation improvements.
• Prior experience leading or managing automation engineers in a collaborative, technical leadership capacity.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills across Engineering, DevOps, QA, and Product teams.
• Strong understanding of test environments, containerized testing, and cloud infrastructure including Docker, AWS, SSH, and related tooling.
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted coding or development tools to improve automation productivity and maintainability.
• Experience supporting or introducing performance, load, or reliability testing using tools such as JMeter, Gatling, k6, or similar is preferred.
• Experience working in regulated, compliance-driven, or security-sensitive environments is preferred.