Lead Automation Engineer Manager

About the role

The QA team within State Street's Global Technology Services (GlobalLink) – Fund Connect delivers high-quality, scalable solutions and ensures product stability, performance, and automation scalability. As a Lead Automation Engineer, you will take ownership of test automation strategy, framework development, and end-to-end quality assurance across complex enterprise applications, collaborating with stakeholders and cross-functional teams within Agile Scrum teams. You will design and scale automated test frameworks, build CI/CD pipelines, perform hands-on front-end and API automation, write SQL queries for validation, and mentor junior QA engineers. This role is based in Hyderabad, India.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with stakeholders, business analysts, developers, and cross-functional teams to ensure end-to-end quality ownership within Agile Scrum teams
• Design, develop, and scale automated test frameworks and regression suite to validate business requirements across products and services
• Demonstrate strong programming expertise in Java (preferred), C#, or Python to build scalable and maintainable automation solutions
• Build and integrate CI/CD pipelines to execute automated functional, integration, regression, and performance tests
• Perform hands-on front-end automation testing using Selenium/Playwright, or equivalent industry-standard tools
• Develop, execute, and maintain automated test suites covering functional, integration, regression, and performance testing
• Interpret automation results, log defects, and proactively collaborate with developers to drive timely issue resolution
• Write SQL queries independently to validate data correctness and support root-cause analysis

What you’ll bring

• 10-14 years of experience in software QA with strong emphasis on test automation
• Proven experience as a hands-on individual contributor (not a people-management role)
• Strong expertise in UI and API test automation, including REST API testing using tools such as Selenium, Rest Assured, Postman, or equivalent
• Strong understanding of test frameworks (e.g., TestNG, Cucumber, BDD-style frameworks)
• Proficiency in Java
• Strong manual testing fundamentals and test design methodologies
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum delivery models
• Ability to write SQL queries for validation and perform strong defect analysis

Nice to have

• Exposure to load/performance testing concepts and tools
• Experience testing complex enterprise platforms (financial systems preferred)
• Experience with Jira and test management practices

Skills