Senior SDET – Integration & Platform

Description

Salary Range
$44 – $46 / hour

Work Policy
Remote (U.S.), with required travel for quarterly PI planning; possible onsite presence in Washington, DC, Wilmington, DE, or Philadelphia, PA

Core Tech Stack
Java, TypeScript, Playwright, Selenium, REST Assured, Karate, Kafka, SQL

Experience Level
Senior (5+ years automation, 7+ years or Bachelor’s equivalent)

Job Type
Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — no C2C or 1099)

ZipStaff is hiring a Senior SDET to own UI, API, and Kafka test strategy for a workflow-driven microservices platform supporting enterprise workforce management at a major passenger-rail and transportation organization. This is a senior automation lead seat, not a manual QA role — you’ll build out test suites in CI/CD and mentor other engineers along the way.

About ZipStaff

ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled technology professionals with high-impact contract opportunities, focusing on strong matches, clear communication, and long-term success for both candidates and clients.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain UI and API automation using Playwright, Selenium, REST Assured, Karate, Java, and TypeScript.
• Validate distributed microservices, state-heavy workflows, REST APIs (functional, performance, and security testing including authn/authz), and Kafka messaging.
• Run SQL checks to confirm referential integrity and correct state transitions.
• Build resiliency tests covering retries, failure handling, and idempotency.
• Embed automation directly into Jenkins, GitHub, or Bitbucket CI/CD pipelines.
• Use monitoring tools like CloudWatch, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, or ELK to observe system behavior under load.
• Set quality gates together with developers, product owners, and architects.
• Mentor other engineers, covering both modern systems and mainframe/batch integration testing.

What You’ll Need

• Bachelor’s degree or 7+ years of equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of manual and automated testing experience on complex enterprise systems.
• Strong Java and TypeScript skills for building automation.
• Solid experience testing UI, APIs, and microservices.
• Strong SQL skills, covering both relational and NoSQL data validation.
• Experience working within Agile/DevOps delivery models.
• Ability to travel for quarterly PI planning sessions (client covers travel, lodging, and select meals).
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship.

Nice to Have

• Experience in transportation, logistics, rail, or financial platforms.
• Kafka or other event-driven testing experience.
• Familiarity with JMeter and AWS.
• Experience with mainframe, 3270, or batch-to-modern integration testing.