Staff SDET (Platform-Wide Influence, Individual Contributor role)
Remote – US Based
Permanent
Salary: $150k – $170k + excellent benefits
Position Overview:
This is a rare opportunity to become the first dedicated quality and test automation leader for a digital innovation team and build an entire automation function from the ground up. If you thrive in 0‑to‑1 environments, love owning technical decisions, and want your work to have company‑wide impact, keep reading! By joining this team, you’ll contribute to a mission‑driven organization focused on making a meaningful social impact, every improvement you deliver helps support millions of people.
Why This Role Is Exciting
- You will be the first SDET in this mid-market organization. Nothing is built yet, and you’ll have the freedom to design the automation architecture, select the tools, and create the frameworks that development teams will depend on.
- You will collaborate closely with engineering and product leaders, shaping the direction of testability, reliability, and risk-based decision making across the entire platform.
- The tech stack is modern and API-driven, including React, Next.js, Postgres, AWS, GitHub, and CI/CD pipelines. You’ll have the freedom to introduce the tools and frameworks you believe are best.
What You Will Be Doing
- Owning the full quality and automation strategy for the platform.
- Designing and building automation across UI, API, integration, backend, and performance layers (Individual Contributor Role).
- Integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines to produce reliable release indicators.
- Creating documentation, test coverage strategy, quality metrics, and maintainable standards.
- Participating in architecture and design reviews with a focus on reliability, risk, and testability.
- Partnering closely with engineering and product to embed quality early in the development lifecycle.
Absolute Requirements
- 6+ years of experience in SDET and QA automation with ownership of quality for production-grade systems – this is hands on!
- Demonstrated 0→1 builder experience: you have personally built an automation framework from scratch or fully re‑architected one at scale.
- Experience influencing engineers and product partners using clear, data-backed quality insights and strong architectural judgment.
- Strong programming skills in JavaScript, Python, React, and Next.js with production‑quality test code; full‑stack automation experience across UI, API, backend, and integration; proven CI/CD integration ownership; AWS
- Experience working in financial or FinTech systems, with knowledge of testing patterns relevant to regulated or high-integrity environments.