Lead SDET (Playwright Automation)

About the job

About The Role This role is about going beyond traditional QA, you’ll be a hands-on leader who builds frameworks, improves testing approaches, and ensures fast, reliable releases with minimal bug leakage. You’ll influence architecture, enable shift-left testing practices, and motivate the team to innovate in how we approach product quality.

We’re looking for a Lead SDET who can not only drive technical quality initiatives but also set examples for the team, mentor peers, and ensure product excellence across performance, scalability, and automation.

Responsibilities

• Lead Quality Initiatives: Set quality standards and best practices across UI, API, performance, and scalability testing
• Framework Development: Design, build, and maintain robust test automation frameworks for UI and API testing
• Code & Architecture Reviews: Conduct code reviews for junior engineers, guide them in understanding the impact of code changes, and enforce scalable automation patterns
• Shift-Left Testing: Drive early quality practices by embedding testing in the design and development phase; ensure automation catches bugs as early as possible
• Performance & Scalability: Partner with product and engineering teams to validate scalability, performance, and infrastructure-level quality
• Micro frontend & DB Expertise: Provide technical quality insights on microfrontend architecture and databases (MongoDB, Firebase, etc.)
• Mentorship: Inspire, mentor, and guide the QA/SDET team to continuously improve their technical skills and testing mindset
• Innovation in Testing: Encourage new approaches beyond traditional testing methods, focusing on efficiency, faster delivery, and minimal bug leakage
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work with developers, PMs, DevOps, and product stakeholders to ensure quality is owned across the product lifecycle
• RCA: Drive RCA for all prod issues and plug the defect leakage gaps

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software testing and automation, with at least 3+ years in a lead or senior role
• Proven experience building and scaling automation frameworks for both UI and API
• Strong coding skills in languages commonly used for test automation (e.g., JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Java)
• Solid understanding of performance, scalability, and infrastructure testing
• Hands-on experience with microfrontend architectures and databases like MongoDB and Firebase
• Experience conducting code reviews and mentoring team members
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and integrating automation for continuous testing
• Proven experience managing and optimizing CI/CD pipelines for large-scale applications. Ability to influence product architecture and design with a quality-first mindset
• Excellent communication and leadership skills with the ability to motivate and inspire a team
• Customer-first approach: ensuring quality translates to real-world reliability and user experience
• Experience in developing tools which helped QA org to improve the productivity

Skills: test automation,automation framework,rca,sdet,infrastructure testing