Automation Architect

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Strategy

• Define the QE reference architecture (UI, API, data, mobile, non-functional) aligned to product and platform strategy.
• Design modular, scalable test automation frameworks in Java + Selenium (Page Object/Screenplay/Component Object Model), extendable to REST Assured, Playwright, and contract testing (Pact).
• Establish test pyramid, shift-left practices, and quality gates integrated into build pipelines.
• Introduce service virtualization, test data management (TDM), and environment strategy (ephemeral envs, test containers).

DevOps & Platform Engineering

• Industrialize automation via CI/CD (Jenkins/GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps), parallelization, and Selenium Grid/Docker/Kubernetes.
• Set up artifact versioning, secrets management, policy-as-code, and SonarQube quality profiles for automation code.
• Implement observability for tests (structured logs, trace IDs, metrics dashboards, Allure/Extent/Custom Grafana boards).
• Drive flaky test governance (quarantine lanes, retry heuristics, root-cause patterns, stability SLOs).

Cloud & Modern Platforms

• Design cloud-native test execution (AWS/Azure/GCP), leverage BrowserStack/Sauce Labs for cross-browser/device coverage.
• Validate distributed systems (event-driven/Kafka), microservices, and serverless with contract & resilience testing.
• Integrate feature flags, blue-green/canary validation, and chaos experiments into pre-prod gates.

Non-Functional Quality

• Establish performance engineering baselines (JMeter/Gatling, capacity modeling, SLAs/SLOs).
• Embed security testing (OWASP ASVS, ZAP/Burp automation hooks), accessibility (WCAG), and reliability checks.

Leadership & Client Orientation

• Run architecture reviews, coach SDETs, and build communities of practice for QE.
• Partner with Product/Engineering to shape roadmaps, budgets, and resourcing, support RFPs and client workshops.
• Translate complex quality risks into clear, executive-ready narratives and remediation plans.