Lead Test Automation Engineer

Quick Facts

• Work Policy: Remote-first, with flexible full-time or hybrid telecommuting
• Job Type: Full Time
• Salary Range: $128,700 – $214,600 base, plus eligibility for the annual bonus program
• Experience Level: 8+ years of test automation or quality engineering experience

About the Role

Symetra is looking for a hands-on technical leader to guide a small team of 2 to 3 automation engineers. In this role you’ll lead the design and improvement of scalable test automation frameworks, test environments, and CI/CD integrations, and you’ll be expected to work with minimal supervision. Symetra describes itself as a remote-first organization with a cameras-on culture.

What You’ll Do

You’ll lead and give technical direction to the automation engineers on your team while staying close to the code yourself, handling framework development, code reviews, and debugging. You’ll design and maintain automated test strategies and frameworks that cover API, UI, integration, functional, regression, smoke, performance, and reliability testing, and you’ll standardize the frameworks, tools, coding practices, and environments the teams use.

You’ll drive the automation strategy, CI/CD integration, and tooling decisions, and take ownership of framework health, pipeline integration, and reporting automation risks to leadership. You’ll define and track metrics such as coverage, stability, and failure trends, lead root-cause analysis, and put preventive fixes in place. You’ll also mentor engineers, testers, analysts, and interns, and partner with development, QA, DevOps, architecture, product, business, and vendor teams.

• Lead and give technical direction to automation engineers
• Design and maintain automated test strategies and frameworks covering API, UI, integration, functional, regression, smoke, performance, and reliability testing
• Standardize frameworks, tools, coding practices, and environments
• Drive automation strategy, CI/CD integration, and tooling decisions
• Stay hands-on with framework development, code reviews, and debugging
• Mentor engineers, testers, analysts, and interns
• Own framework health, pipeline integration, and reporting of automation risks to leadership
• Define and track metrics such as coverage, stability, and failure trends
• Lead root-cause analysis and implement preventive fixes
• Partner with development, QA, DevOps, architecture, product, business, and vendor teams

What You’ll Need

• 8+ years of test automation or quality engineering experience
• Significant hands-on experience maintaining automation across multiple applications
• Proven experience leading and mentoring automation engineers
• Experience designing and governing scalable frameworks
• Advanced experience with Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or Pytest
• Strong API testing experience (Postman, REST, JSON)
• Experience integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines
• Knowledge of functional, regression, integration, end-to-end, smoke, performance, and reliability testing
• Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills across distributed systems
• Understanding of DevOps practices and test environment management
• Experience testing cloud applications on AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Strong communication and stakeholder-influencing skills

Other Requirements

Symetra does not offer visa sponsorship, so candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S. at hire and throughout employment. Remote candidates need an internet connection of at least 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload over fiber, cable, or DSL; satellite, cellular, and other wireless connections are not permitted. Video interviews are required after the initial phone screen, and fraud-prevention checks apply.

Benefits

Flexible full-time or hybrid telecommuting; a 401(k) with immediate vesting and company matching up to 6%; vacation, sick time, flex days, and ten paid holidays; and company matching for charitable giving.