Quality Assurance Lead / SDET

Quality Assurance Lead / SDET Provide Locations: Prioritized Client Tech Hubs as per Priority Order: 1. Pittsburgh, PA, 15222, 2. Dallas, TX, 75234, 3. Cleveland, OH, 44136 / Birmingham, AL, 35233 / Phoenix, AZ, 85016 Length of Assignment: 12 Months Contract to Hire role Pay Rate: $50 to 60/hr. on W2 ONLY Function of the Group: Revenue Support Industry background: Financial background is a plus Roles and Responsibilities: 1. Quality Strategy, Governance & Leadership: Own and define end to end test strategy for large, complex initiatives, including functional, integration, regression, API, and nonfunctional testing. Act as the quality engineering lead for multiteam programs, ensuring consistent standards, tooling, and governance. Coach, mentor, and provide technical leadership to QA engineers and SDETs across delivery teams. Influence system design early by partnering with architects and developers to improve testability, reliability, and quality outcomes. Ensure compliance with SDLC, PMLC, and enterprise risk and control requirements, including audit readiness. 2. Automation & Frameworks (Java / Selenium / Cucumber): Build and maintain comprehensive automation suites for UI and API testing using tools such as Selenium, Cucumber (for BDD), and Karate (for API testing). Establish best practices for test automation architecture, code quality, and reusability. " Drive increased automation coverage across UI, API, and backend services. 3. Programming & Technical Depth: Write high quality, production grade automation code using Java and supporting libraries. Perform code reviews and enforce engineering best practices within test codebases. Debug complex issues across test frameworks, environments, and application layers. 4. API Testing & Service Virtualization: Lead testing of RESTful and SOAP services, including contract validation and negative scenarios. Implement and promote service virtualization and test stubbing strategies to enable parallel development and early testing. Validate messaging and event driven architectures (e.g., Kafka based systems). 5. CI/CD, Tooling & Reporting: Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring fast feedback and high signal quality. Define and maintain test reporting, metrics, and dashboards to communicate quality, risk, and readiness to stakeholders. Continuously improve pipeline efficiency and test execution reliability. 6. Data, Databases & Test Data Management: Validate data integrity across systems using Oracle, MongoDB, and related data stores. Design effective test data strategies, including data creation, masking, and environment management. Analyze database impacts and downstream effects of application changes. 7. Performance Testing Awareness: Partner with performance and engineering teams to ensure performance, scalability, and resiliency considerations are addressed early. Contribute to performance test planning and interpretation of results, even if execution is handled by specialized teams. 8. Domain Knowledge (Banking & Consumer Lending): Apply strong understanding of banking concepts, consumer lending workflows, and regulatory considerations to test design and risk assessment. Leverage prior financial services experience to anticipate real world failure scenarios, data issues, and compliance risks. Must Have Technical Skills: 8-10+ years of experience: 1. Senior level experience as an SDET or QA Engineer, with a strong focus on automation and enterprise systems. 2. Proven experience leading testing efforts for large scale, multiteam initiatives. 3. Strong hands on expertise with: 1. Java, Selenium, Cucumber/Gherkin 2. API testing (REST, SOAP) 3. CI/CD pipelines and automated quality gates. 4. Experience working with Kafka, Web Services, Oracle, MongoDB, and distributed systems. 5. Solid understanding of test strategy, governance, and risk based testing. 6. Experience in banking or financial services is strongly preferred. Flex Skills/Nice to Have: 1. Thought leader in quality engineering who challenges the status quo. 2. Comfortable operating at both strategic and hands on levels. 3. Strong communicator who can articulate quality risks and tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical audiences. 4, Passionate about mentoring and raising the overall quality maturity of teams. 5. Banking experience is a great plus. Education/Certifications: Bachelor degree or equivalent work experience. Interview Process: Two 45 min interviews: Both virtual In-person optional as needed. First Round: Panel (2-3) Reserve the right to hire without a second round " Second Round: Single Tech Lead Hiring Manager Stack Ranking of Importance (Most Important to Least Important): 1. Skills 2. Location 3. Prior Client Experience 4. Rate