Senior Functional and Automated Tester

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Functional and Automated Tester based in the United States. This is a senior-level quality engineering role focused on delivering secure, reliable, and high-performing modern applications. You will lead functional and automated testing across complex, distributed, and cloud-based environments. The role combines hands-on automation with test strategy, release readiness, defect prevention, and quality governance. You’ll work closely with product, engineering, DevSecOps, and business stakeholders throughout the software development lifecycle. Your work will span APIs, microservices, event-driven systems, cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines, and user-facing applications. You’ll also help strengthen observability, security, performance, and operational readiness across delivery teams. This remote opportunity is suited to a technically strong tester who enjoys solving complex problems and raising engineering quality standards. Lead testing strategy and planning by defining scope, risks, environments, test data, tooling, timelines, and release-readiness requirements. Translate business and technical requirements into comprehensive test strategies, test plans, test cases, and validation approaches covering functional, integration, regression, performance, and security needs. Design, develop, and maintain automated tests for unit, API, integration, and user-interface testing, integrating repeatable automation into CI/CD pipelines. Execute hands-on functional testing across workflows, edge cases, data validation, error handling, and operational scenarios to ensure solutions meet business and user expectations. Validate distributed and event-driven architectures, including asynchronous workflows and message-based services such as Kafka, with emphasis on resiliency, traceability, and correct processing. Test API-centric architectures, including microservices and serverless applications, validating contracts, backward compatibility, integrations, and end-to-end behavior. Partner with DevSecOps and engineering teams to promote secure development practices, consistent standards, and effective quality controls. Coordinate test environments, deployments, configuration changes, and environment readiness with technical teams. Identify security and data risks during testing, document findings, escalate issues appropriately, and track defects through resolution. Lead defect triage and root-cause analysis, collaborate with developers and stakeholders to verify fixes, and introduce preventative quality measures. Validate observability practices, including logging, metrics, tracing, performance baselines, and operational readiness. Produce clear test evidence, defect reports, dashboards, diagrams, and runbooks suitable for leadership, operational, audit, and compliance needs. Apply approved AI-assisted development and testing tools to accelerate test creation, analysis, and defect triage while maintaining security and quality standards. Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience; candidates without a relevant four-year degree may qualify with an additional four years of relevant experience. At least 8 years of experience in software testing, quality engineering, or software development with substantial testing and automation responsibilities. Proven experience owning test strategy and automation for complex, distributed, cloud-based, or enterprise applications. Strong functional testing and automation experience across the software development lifecycle, including regression planning and release readiness. Hands-on experience with automated testing for unit, API, integration, and user-interface layers, with familiarity with TDD and automation-first approaches. Experience working within CI/CD environments using source-control and build/deployment technol