Position Overview
As a Senior Technical Engineering Manager, SDET at Alkami, you will lead, mentor, and scale a team of Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) responsible for delivering high-quality, scalable, and reliable automation frameworks and testing solutions.
This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical execution — requiring you to stay close to the codebase and contribute directly to framework design, automation architecture, and quality infrastructure (approximately 20–30% hands-on coding and reviews).
You will own and evolve Alkami’s quality engineering strategy, driving quality-first practices across multiple product domains. Working closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps, and Security teams, you’ll embed quality early in the development lifecycle through shift-left testing, continuous validation, and observability-driven feedback loops.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of SDETs focused on full-stack automation across Web, Mobile, and API layers.
- Contribute directly to the design, architecture, and development of test automation frameworks, tools, and libraries (~20–30% hands-on coding).
- Architect and evolve scalable automation frameworks and testing infrastructure to improve reliability, maintainability, and velocity.
- Define and execute enterprise-level quality strategies across functional, regression, integration, exploratory, performance, and reliability testing.
- Partner with Development, Product, DevOps, and Security teams to design and implement holistic testing strategies ensuring high-quality releases.
- Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions) to ensure early defect detection.
- Lead and analyze performance, load, and scalability testing (JMeter, Gatling), incorporating observability data into quality metrics.
- Define and track key metrics (e.g., defect escape rate, automation coverage, stability) to drive continuous improvement.
- Champion modern testing practices: shift-left, mocking, service virtualization, contract testing, and risk-based validation.
- Ensure robust test environments, data management, and automation infrastructure supporting rapid delivery cycles.
- Lead hiring, onboarding, and professional development for SDETs, fostering a culture of ownership, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
- Represent Quality Engineering in enterprise programs, influencing architecture and design for reliability, performance, and customer trust.
Qualifications
Required:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- 10+ years in software or quality engineering, including 5+ years in technical leadership roles leading SDET/QA teams.
- Strong proficiency in Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Python.
- Deep expertise in automation tools: Playwright, Selenium, Appium, JUnit/TestNG, RestAssured, Postman.
- Proven success in designing and scaling automation frameworks in microservices/cloud-based architectures.
- Experience integrating automation within CI/CD (Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
- Understanding of performance testing (JMeter, Gatling) and interpreting system-level metrics.
- Strong foundation in testing pyramid, mocking, service virtualization, and test data management.
- Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Data-driven mindset with proven ability to improve product quality and release velocity.
Preferred:
- Experience in cloud-native environments (AWS preferred — Lambda, EKS, CloudFront, etc.).
- Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools (Datadog, Grafana, CloudWatch).
- Experience in regulated domains (e.g., FinTech) with exposure to compliance testing and secure test data management.
- Understanding of reliability and resilience practices, including chaos engineering, contract testing, and canary deployments.
