Lead Software Test Automation Engineer

Location: IND-Pune-Smartworks

Remote Type: Hybrid (8 days/month)

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

Professional Experience: 10 to 16 Years

• Own test planning, test environment readiness, execution oversight, and ongoing progress reporting.
• Coordinate closely with testers and guide the transition of manual test scenarios into the automation suite.
• Provide continuous support for both manual and automated testing initiatives, including resource and workload coordination as needed.
• Participate in requirements elicitation and analysis from a QA/testing standpoint.
• Operate in a hybrid capacity with ~70% individual contributor (hands-on automation/manual execution, framework improvements, defect validation) and ~30% lead responsibilities (planning, coordination, stakeholder updates, and mentoring).
• Perform and drive code reviews / PR reviews for automation changes to ensure coding standards, test reliability, maintainability, and alignment with framework best practices.
• Accelerate automation delivery by leveraging AI-assisted development (e.g., GitHub Copilot), agentic automation approaches, and modern Playwright practices to improve speed and quality of test creation/maintenance.
• Mentor and upskill automation resources to effectively and responsibly use AI tools for automation development, troubleshooting, and framework enhancements.
• Drive and execute Proof of Concepts (POCs) to evaluate and adopt new automation tools/approaches (AI-assisted automation, Playwright enhancements, agentic workflows), and recommend rollout strategy based on outcomes.

Knowledge/skills and Experience:

• Requirements gathering/analysis in a QA role; challenge and clarify requirements to ensure testability.

• Strong understanding of client business workflows, technology needs, test tools, and integration touchpoints across interfacing systems.

• Strong command of QA best practices, test design techniques, and end-to-end testing methodology.

• Review project artifacts (functional requirements, unit/integration plans, etc.) to identify gaps and ensure complete coverage.

• Validate technical and user documentation for correctness, usability, and procedural accuracy.

• Translate functional/technical specs into reusable manual and automated test scripts for new features and enhancements.

• Plan and execute full test cycles (smoke/sanity, functional, integration, regression) with high attention to detail.

• Strong OOP fundamentals with hands-on C#.NET development skills.

• UI automation with Selenium (Java / C#) and Playwright (TypeScript); API testing (validation + automation).

• PR/code review expertise for automation frameworks and suites; enforce standards/quality gates and actively reduce flakiness and maintenance overhead.

• Accelerate automation using AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) for authoring, refactoring, debugging, Playwright fixes, and framework enhancements.

• Working knowledge of agentic automation concepts (AI-assisted workflows, scaffolding, intelligent triage/self-healing patterns) to improve productivity and stability.

• Mentor engineers on effective and responsible AI usage (prompting practices, secure use, maintainability, and review expectations).

• Drive POCs/technical evaluations; document outcomes and recommend adoption based on quality impact, ROI, and delivery goals.

Key Performance measure

• Stable releases with measurable reduction in hotfixes, escaped defects, and defect re-open rate.
• Increased automation coverage of critical business flows (smoke + regression), with coverage growth tracked sprint-over-sprint / release-over-release.
• Reduced automation flakiness via proactive triage, root-cause analysis, and stabilization practices (robust sync/waits, test-data isolation, environment health checks, and controlled retry strategy where appropriate).
• Improved CI/CD signal-to-noise by sustaining a strong pass rate, minimizing false failures, and enabling faster pipeline feedback.
• Lower automation maintenance effort through better test design, higher reusability/modularization, and strong PR quality gates/coding standards.
• Higher automation throughput and improved cycle time using AI-assisted development and Playwright/framework optimizations.

Other Key Competencies:

• Strong verbal/written communication and presentation skills; customer-facing delivery and documentation experience.
• Self-driven and independent; balances strategic ownership with execution detail.
• Effective in ambiguous environments with multiple priorities and stakeholders.
• Proven cross-functional collaboration (Sales, Support, Consulting, Product, Engineering).
• Strong analytical/problem-solving skills with a focus on practical, efficient solutions.
• Thrives on complex problem solving and continuous improvement/innovation.
• Performs well under pressure; manages customer expectations and tight timelines.
• Customer-focused, quality-first mindset with strong attention to detail.
• Strong documentation capability.
• Manual testing skills essential.

Our Interview Practices

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process

Our Interview Practices

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.