Principal Engineering Manager- SDET

Job Overview

We are seeking an experienced and visionary

Principal Engineering Manager – Quality Engineering

to lead and scale quality engineering practices for our AI-driven cloud operations platform.

This role is responsible for driving the organization-wide quality strategy, building high-performing teams, and ensuring the delivery of reliable, scalable, and high-quality products in a fast-paced SaaS environment. The ideal candidate combines technical depth, leadership excellence, and strategic thinking to establish quality engineering as a core competitive advantage.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive and evolve the
• organization-wide quality engineering strategy
• for our cloud-native SaaS platform
• Lead and standardize
• quality platforms, automation toolchains, and engineering best practices
• across teams in collaboration with platform and engineering groups
• Establish and govern
• quality gates, release processes, and reporting standards
• to ensure consistent delivery quality
• Define and track
• quality metrics and KPIs
• (e.g., defect leakage, coverage, release confidence) to drive continuous improvement
• Build, mentor, and scale
• high-performing quality engineering teams
• across multiple pods

Drive

• hiring, org design, career development, and performance management
• for the QE function
• Lead the evolution of
• scalable automation frameworks and quality platforms
• across UI, API, and integration layers
• Define and implement
• test strategies for microservices-based and distributed systems
• Ensure effective integration of
• quality engineering within CI/CD pipelines
• with strong quality gates

Drive

• API-first testing strategies
• , including contract and schema validation at scale

Leverage

• observability (logs, metrics, traces)
• to enable production validation and improve system reliability (shift-right)

Influence

• architecture and design decisions
• to improve testability, scalability, and overall system quality
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Platform teams to
• embed quality practices early in the development lifecycle (shift-left)
• Support and evolve approaches for
• testing AI/ML-driven features
• , including validation of non-deterministic outputs
• Define and oversee
• performance and load testing strategies
• for distributed systems (k6, Locust, Gatling, etc.)
• Collaborate with SRE and infrastructure teams on
• test environments, tooling, and cloud-based execution

Contribute to

• strategic planning and tooling decisions
• for quality engineering

Must Have

12-16

• years of experience in
• quality engineering / test automation

, with

5+

• leadership experience
• Proven experience managing and scaling
• Quality Engineering teams (10+ members preferred)
• Experience leading
• modernization/migration initiatives
• (e.g., legacy to modern automation frameworks, tooling consolidation, platform upgrades)
• Strong programming background in

Python, Java, or JavaScript

• Hands-on experience with
• modern test automation frameworks
• (Playwright/Cypress, Pytest or equivalent)
• Strong expertise in
• API testing and distributed systems validation
• Experience working with
• CI/CD pipelines and quality gates

(Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)

• Solid understanding of
• cloud-native architectures
• (microservices, containers, distributed systems)

Experience with

Docker and Kubernetes-based environments

Familiarity with

cloud platforms (AWS preferred)

Experience with

contract testing / schema validation

(OpenAPI, Pact)

• Working knowledge of
• observability tools

(Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch)

Experience with

• performance and load testing for distributed systems
• (k6, Locust, Gatling, etc.)
• Strong understanding of
• SDLC, Agile, and DevOps practices

Familiarity with

AI-driven or intelligent test automation tools

Good to Have

Experience with

• AI/ML-driven systems or data-intensive platforms
• , including testing strategies

Knowledge of

• event-driven architectures
• (Kafka, messaging systems)

Exposure to

• security testing and compliance standards
• (OWASP, SOC2, etc.)

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong leadership and people management capabilities
• Ability to influence
• cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders
• Strong decision-making and problem-solving skills
• Ability to thrive in a
• fast-paced, high-growth environment

Experience

• 12-16 years of experience in quality engineering / test automation
• 5+ years of experience in engineering management / leadership roles
• Proven track record of driving
• quality transformation initiatives at scale

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field