Quality Assurance Engineer III

Lead Quality Engineer – Backend/API Platforms

Role Type

Full-Time

Position Summary

We are seeking experienced Lead Quality Engineers to drive quality engineering for enterprise-scale backend platforms, APIs, and distributed services. The ideal candidates will combine strong technical expertise in API automation, system integration, performance testing, and CI/CD with demonstrated experience leading quality engineering delivery.

In this role, the Lead Quality Engineer will work closely with software engineering, architecture, product management, DevOps, and other QE teams to define and execute comprehensive quality strategies. The position requires strong ownership, hands-on technical capability, and the ability to lead testing across complex workflows involving multiple applications, services, and integration points.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead quality engineering activities for backend applications, REST APIs, microservices, and integration platforms.
• Define and implement comprehensive test strategies covering functional, integration, end-to-end, regression, performance, reliability, and production-readiness testing.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable API test automation frameworks and reusable testing utilities.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to QE engineers across onshore and offshore teams.
• Collaborate with developers, architects, product owners, and business stakeholders to understand requirements, identify risks, and establish appropriate quality coverage.
• Review technical designs, API contracts, acceptance criteria, and implementation approaches to identify quality risks early in the development lifecycle.
• Lead end-to-end validation of business workflows spanning multiple backend services and dependent systems.
• Integrate automated test suites with CI/CD pipelines and establish quality gates for application deployments.
• Drive shift-left testing by enabling early validation within development and lower environments.
• Plan and execute performance, load, scalability, and reliability testing for high-volume platform services.
• Analyze application logs, monitoring data, database records, and service interactions to troubleshoot complex issues.
• Develop tools and utilities that improve testing efficiency, test-data management, environment validation, and defect diagnosis.
• Monitor automation results, identify recurring failure patterns, and improve the stability and effectiveness of automated test suites.
• Support release-readiness assessments and communicate quality status, risks, dependencies, and recommendations to stakeholders.
• Participate in production validation and root-cause analysis of customer or production issues.
• Mentor QE team members and promote engineering best practices, technical learning, and continuous improvement.
• Contribute to quality metrics, dashboards, test reporting, and defect-prevention initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• Approximately 8 or more years of experience in software quality engineering, including experience leading QE delivery for backend or platform services.
• Strong hands-on experience testing REST APIs, microservices, distributed systems, and service-to-service integrations.
• Strong experience building and maintaining automated API test solutions using tools and technologies such as REST Assured, Java, TestNG, Cucumber, Postman, or comparable frameworks.
• Solid programming or scripting skills in Java, Python, JavaScript, Groovy, or a similar language.
• Experience with CI/CD tools and automated pipeline integration, such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, or equivalent platforms.
• Experience with performance and load-testing tools such as Apache JMeter, Gatling, or similar solutions.
• Strong knowledge of software testing methodologies, test design techniques, defect management, and risk-based testing.
• Experience validating complex end-to-end workflows across multiple applications and dependent services.
• Ability to analyze logs, API requests and responses, database data, and distributed-system interactions.

Leadership Competencies

• Demonstrates strong ownership and accountability for product quality.
• Provides dependable technical and delivery leadership.
• Effectively manages priorities across multiple services, releases, and stakeholder groups.
• Balances hands-on technical contributions with team leadership and mentoring.
• Promotes automation, continuous testing, reusable solutions, and defect prevention.
• Communicates clearly and confidently with both technical teams and senior stakeholders