Technical Lead - QA Automation Engineer

Reference Number: RKCATL9

Technical Lead - QA Automation Engineer

Not Disclosed

Phoenix, AZ

6.0 Months

Not Disclosed

Not Disclosed

Government - State

Job Description

The Impact

Lead the quality platform behind mission-critical software. Partner directly with architects to fix today’s framework pain, modernize our stack, and hard-wire a true shift-left culture—while piloting AI- assisted testing to boost coverage, speed, and confidence.

What You’ll Do

Own the quality platform: Set strategy, architecture, and standards for automation—Java today, with pragmatic evolution to modern UI/API automation where it improves reliability.
Embed quality early: Drive PR-level tests, contract/API checks, and CI/CD quality gates for rapid, trusted developer feedback.
Apply AI where it counts: Use AI/LLM-assisted test generation, self-healing locators, flake triage, and test-impact analysis to reduce toil and raise signal.
Simplify the SDLC: With DevOps, streamline pipelines, test data management, environment provisioning, and release guardrails for faster flow.
Solve hard problems with architects: Tackle cross-cutting issues (auth, data, performance, flakiness) and retire tech debt with durable solutions.
Build the right tests: Expand reliable web/UI, API, and integration coverage; harden environments and test data.
Coach and elevate: Mentor QA engineers, review automation code, and set standards for readability, reliability, and maintainability.
Measure what matters: Stand up live dashboards (coverage, pass/fail, flakiness, MTTR) to inform decisions and continuously raise the bar.
Own root cause: Lead deep-dive debugging across test and prod, driving prevention—not just fixes.

Your Toolbox:

Languages/Frameworks: Java, JUnit, Maven; BDD with Cucumber/Gherkin.
Automation: Selenium WebDriver (today); informed experience with Playwright (Java/TypeScript) a plus.
CI/CD & SCM: Jenkins, GitHub Actions; GitHub for collaboration.
Observability & Metrics: Grafana (quality and performance dashboards).
Backend/Platform context: Spring Boot/Spring Security; Oracle DB; FileNet/content systems.
Scripting: PowerShell or similar for utilities.
Quality practices: Testing pyramid, risk-based design, code reviews, and environment parity.

Where We’re Headed (And Where You’ll Lead)

GitHub-native CI/CD: Standardize on GitHub pipelines for frequent, automated deployments—define branch strategy, environment promotions, and reusable workflows that make shipping safe by default.
Reliable testing for high velocity: Build a strategy that scales with cadence—PR checks, contract/API tests, fast UI smoke suites, test-impact analysis, deterministic data & ephemeral envs, parallelization, and rigorous flake control.
AI-assisted, data-driven quality: Apply LLM-assisted test generation/self-healing and enforce quality gates backed by live dashboards (coverage, flakiness, MTTR, DORA) to boost signal and confidence.
Framework evolution (tool-agnostic): Evaluate and pilot modern UI/API automation options against clear criteria (reliability, speed, parity, maintainability, ROI) and recommend phased adoption that protects delivery.

What You Bring

10+ years in QA/automation with 5+ years leading/architecting frameworks.
Proven success embedding automated quality gates into CI/CD for high-velocity releases.
Track record mentoring engineers and raising the bar on code quality and test design.
Comfort collaborating with architects and senior engineers on systemic quality problems.

Nice-To-Have

Experience introducing AI tooling (e.g., Copilot, test-gen, self-healing) into real teams.
Performance, security, or contract-testing exposure.

Required Skills
3+ years in a technical leadership or lead automation engineer role. MUST have Leadership experience
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) using Gherkin or Cucumber
JavaScript, PowerShell, Python, Bash, or Ruby experience
Experience with Spring Framework

Preferred Skills
Grafana experience
Container Architecture: Docker or Kubernetes
Experience with Azure, AWS, or GCP
Maven
AI experience
Jira
Confluence

Notes:

Hybrid: Mostly remote; design/whiteboard sessions.
Equipment: Personal laptop required; Windows workstation provided for remote access.
Contract-to-Hire
80% remote; onsite 1–3×/month

VIVA is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants have an equal opportunity for placement, and all employees have an equal opportunity to develop on the job. This means that VIVA will not discriminate against any employee or qualified applicant on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.