Lead QA Automation Engineer

Position: Lead QA Automation Engineer

Location: Basking Ridge, NJ, 07920

Job Type: 12 months contract

Work Arrangement: On-site Role

Interview Process: 2 rounds of video interviews

Key Responsibilities:

Quality Strategy & Leadership

Define and implement enterprise-level Quality Engineering strategy across multiple applications and programs

Establish best practices for test automation, CI/CD integration, and shift-left quality engineering

Drive adoption of AI-augmented testing (Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Agentic Testing) across teams

Act as quality gatekeeper — ensuring zero-defect leakage into production

Technical Leadership & Architecture

Design and oversee scalable, reusable automation frameworks (UI, API, E2E)

Lead transition from legacy frameworks to next-gen architectures — Playwright, Serenity BDD, MCP-based systems

Define test architecture standards, coding practices, and framework governance

Establish robust test data strategies including synthetic and AI-generated datasets

Agile Delivery & Program Ownership

Own QA delivery across multiple Agile teams or Agile Release Trains (ARTs)

Ensure timely completion of functional, regression, and integration test cycles

Proactively identify and manage risks, dependencies, and delivery bottlenecks

Provide clear, data-driven quality metrics and release readiness updates to leadership

Team Mentorship & Collaboration

Mentor and guide QA engineers in manual, automation, and AI-driven testing practices

Conduct code reviews, test design reviews, and enforce engineering excellence

Collaborate with developers, product owners, architects, and business stakeholders for early quality engagement

Foster a strong quality-first culture within the team

Advanced Testing & Defect Management

Oversee E2E, API, system integration, and regression testing strategies

Lead Sev-1/Sev-2 incident management, root cause analysis, and preventive quality measures

Drive continuous improvement through defect trend analysis and test coverage optimization

AI-Augmented Engineering

Lead adoption of AI-powered test generation and optimization tools

Implement self-healing automation frameworks and intelligent test maintenance

Establish processes for leveraging AI in test case design, debugging, and productivity enhancement

Required Skills & Qualifications

Core Technical Skills

• 8+ years of QA experience with proven leadership across large-scale or multi-team telecom programs
• Deep expertise in Selenium with Java and modern tools like Playwright
• Strong experience designing and maintaining enterprise automation frameworks
• Expertise in E2E, integration, and API testing (REST Assured, Postman)
• Extensive experience with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions) for release gating
• Advanced knowledge of Test Data Management (TDM) including synthetic data strategies
• Hands-on experience with AI tools (Gemini, GitHub Copilot) in engineering workflows
• Ability to define and track KPIs — defect density, leakage, test coverage, and execution health

Domain & Preferred Skills

• Telecom domain experience (OSS/BSS, revenue workflow validation) strongly preferred
• Deep understanding of Agile/SAFe frameworks and Agile Release Trains (ART)
• Knowledge of service assurance, incident management, and network inventory systems (LFIM, CND)
• Familiarity with field service tools — Optix Dispatch, VzOT, Tech360
• Experience with TestNG, Cucumber, Serenity BDD test frameworks

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science / engineering or equivalent practical experience.