QA Automation Test Lead(Vice President)

Job description

**Corporate Title: Vice President** **Location: Pune, India** **Role Description** - We are hiring a leader who can transform testing using AI across business-critical platforms. In this role, you will define and drive the **test automation strategy across batch systems, services, and user interfaces**, ensuring quality is engineered into every layer of the stack. You will enable teams to use AI tools to **generate test cases, improve coverage, and detect issues earlier** in the development cycle. - You will set standards for automation, ensure high-quality releases, and drive a shift towards **faster, smarter, and more reliable testing practices**. You will champion the adoption of AI in quality engineering from intelligent test generation and self-healing automation to anomaly detection and predictive defect analysis. - This is a leadership role for someone who can lead **large-scale improvements in quality through AI-driven practices**, working closely with engineering, product, and business teams across the Counterparty Dashboard, Security Service, and CPA/CDA platforms. **What well offer you** As part of our flexible scheme, here are just some of the benefits that you’ll enjoy, - Best in class leave policy. - Gender neutral parental leaves - 100% reimbursement under childcare assistance benefit (gender neutral) - Sponsorship for Industry relevant certifications and education - Employee Assistance Program for you and your family members - Comprehensive Hospitalization Insurance for you and your dependents - Accident and Term life Insurance - Complementary Health screening for 35 yrs. and above **Your key responsibilities** - **Define Test Automation Strategy:** Own and drive the end-to-end test automation strategy spanning **batch systems, microservices/APIs, and UI layers**. - **AI-Driven Quality Engineering:** Introduce and scale the use of **AI tools and frameworks** for test case generation, test data synthesis, coverage analysis, and intelligent defect detection. - **Shift-Left Testing:** Embed quality early in the SDLC by enabling developers and QA engineers to detect issues during design, coding, and pre-merge stages. - **Automation Standards & Frameworks:** Establish standards, reusable frameworks, and best practices for automation across functional, regression, performance, and resilience testing. - **Release Quality Ownership:** Drive high-quality, predictable releases through robust CI/CD-integrated test pipelines, quality gates, and automated regression suites. - **Coverage & Risk-Based Testing:** Use AI-assisted analytics to identify coverage gaps, prioritize tests based on risk, and optimize test execution time. - **Batch & Data Validation:** Architect automated validation strategies for **batch jobs, data pipelines, and reconciliations** typical of counterparty, security service, and CPA/CDA workflows. - **Tooling & Platform Leadership:** Evaluate, select, and roll out modern testing tools (AI-powered and traditional) across the engineering organization. - **Mentorship & Enablement:** Mentor QA engineers and SDETs on AI-driven testing practices, automation design, and quality engineering principles. - **Stakeholder Collaboration:** Partner with engineering leads, product owners, and business stakeholders to align quality goals with delivery timelines and risk posture. - **Metrics & Continuous Improvement:** Define and track quality KPIs (defect leakage, automation coverage, MTTR, escape rate) and continuously improve testing maturity. **Your skills and experience** **Core Test Automation** - 9–12 years of experience in software quality engineering, with strong hands-on expertise in **test automation across API, UI, and batch systems**. - Deep experience with automation frameworks such as **Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, RestAssured, Karate, Cucumber, TestNG, JUnit**, or equivalents. - Strong experience automating **backend services, microservices, and event-driven systems** (Kafka, MQ, etc.). - Proven track record of building and scaling **batch and data validation** test suites (ETL, reconciliations, scheduled jobs). - Solid programming skills in **Java** (and ideally one of Python / TypeScript / Groovy). - Experience integrating automated tests into **CI/CD pipelines** (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps). **AI in Testing** - Hands-on experience using **AI/LLM-based tools** in testing — for test case generation, test data creation, exploratory testing, and intelligent regression selection. - Familiarity with **AI-powered testing platforms** (e.g., Testim, Mabl, Functionize, Applitools, Diffblue, GitHub Copilot for tests, or equivalents). - Understanding of how to apply **LLMs, embeddings, and prompt engineering** to QA workflows (requirement-to-test mapping, log/defect triage, test summarization). - Experience with **self-healing automation, visual testing, and anomaly detection** using AI/ML. - Awareness of **responsible AI usage** in testing — reliability, traceability, and validation of AI-generated artifacts. **Quality Engineering & Practices** - Strong understanding of **shift-left, shift-right, TDD/BDD, contract testing, and chaos/resilience testing**. - Experience with **performance testing** (JMeter, Gatling, k6) and non-functional testing strategies. - Familiarity with **observability tooling** (Splunk, ELK, Grafana, Dynatrace) to support test analysis and production quality monitoring. - Knowledge of **test data management** and synthetic data generation, including AI-assisted approaches. **Business Domain Knowledge** - Understanding of **financial services domains** — ideally **counterparty risk, security services, CPA/CDA**, or similar regulated, workflow-driven environments. - Awareness of **compliance, audit, and data sensitivity** considerations that shape testing strategies in financial systems. **Leadership & Collaboration** - Demonstrated ability to **lead large-scale quality transformations** and influence engineeri