QA Automation Tech Lead

Overview:

We are looking for an experienced AQA Tech Lead to own the technical direction, architecture, and scalability of our automation platforms across multiple teams.

About Product:

SOFTSWISS Sportsbook Platform
A sports betting platform that allows you to operate a sports betting business online.

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Purpose of the Role:

This role combines technical leadership, hands-on automation expertise, and strategic ownership of test stability, CI/CD integration, automation-first practices and modern AI-driven testing practices.
The AQA Tech Lead will work closely with the QA Tech Lead and the Development team to ensure predictable release quality, stable automation pipelines, and high visibility of quality metrics across the entire engineering team.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Automation Architecture & Strategy

• Own the design, evolution, and scalability of the automation framework.
• Define automation layers (API, UI, service-level) and testing strategy aligned with product architecture.
• Drive migration toward service-level tests where applicable.

• Integrate AI/LLM tools into the automation and test design workflow.
• Introduce standards and limitations for the safe and reliable use of AI in test automation.
• Train AQA and QA teams on the effective use of AI tools in daily work.

• Improve pipeline speed, stability, and reliability (parallelisation, dynamic runners, fail-fast strategies).
• Collaborate with DevOps to optimise test execution infrastructure.
• Establish quality gates in CI (diff coverage, minimal automation criteria, stability thresholds).

• Establish and maintain high standards for test execution stability.
• Define and oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of automated tests, from creation to decommissioning, to ensure lean and relevant regression coverage.

• Set coding standards, review practices, naming conventions, and architectural guidelines for AQA.
• Define standards for test artefacts, ensure traceability between requirements and automation, and promote best practices for technical documentation.
• Lead technical onboarding and training of all AQA engineers.

• Own the regression baseline strategy and ensure consistent execution before releases.
• Work with QA Tech Lead and QA Leads to identify high-risk areas requiring automation.
• Produce data-driven recommendations for regression optimisation.

Required Experience:

• 7+ years in automation engineering, 4+ years in a senior or lead role.
• Strong knowledge of Java.
• Deep experience with API testing (REST, gRPC, contract testing).
• Solid experience with UI automation (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress or similar).
• Strong understanding of CI/CD tools (GitLab CI).
• Knowledge of test runners, parallelisation, and containerised execution.
• Experience with microservices, distributed systems, and integration testing.
• Experience integrating LLM tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or internal LLMs).
• Ability to build or orchestrate AI-driven tooling.
• Russian – native-level proficiency.
• English proficiency at the B1+ level or higher.

• Ability to design and maintain large-scale automation frameworks.
• Experience reducing flakiness through architecture, not patches.
• Clear understanding of service-level vs E2E automation priorities.
• Experience mentoring and developing AQA engineers.
• Ability to produce clear documentation and standards.

• Strong ownership mindset.
• Excellent communication and ability to influence technical teams.
• Proactive problem-solving; ability to drive initiatives end-to-end.
• Skilled at explaining automation priorities to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have:

• Performance testing experience (JMeter, Gatling, k6).
• Experience with contract-first development (OpenAPI/Swagger).
• Experience in high-load / real-time systems.
• Knowledge of feature flag systems and canary deployments.
• Previous work with test data platforms or synthetic data generators.