Lead QA Automation Engineer

About the role:

The Lead QA Automation Engineer is responsible for the design, build, and continuous evolution of Safetrust's test automation frameworks and CI/CD test infrastructure across mobile, web, API, and device platforms. This position plays a key role in the QA organization, turning test cases into fast, reliable, and trustworthy automated checks that gate every release.

This role focuses on automation architecture, CI/CD infrastructure, and cross-layer test strategy, working as a peer to the Test Design Lead (who owns test case design and documentation), and contributes to Safetrust's continued growth by making quality feedback fast and dependable on every commit.

Key Responsibilities:

Automation Framework Ownership

• Architect, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks for web (Selenium, Cypress, Playwright), mobile (Appium, XCUITest, Espresso), and API (REST Assured, Postman/Newman, pytest).
• Define coding standards, design patterns, and reusable abstractions (page objects, fixtures, test data factories, custom matchers).
• Own the technical health of the automation codebase: flakiness budget, runtime budget, code coverage of the framework itself, and dependency hygiene.
• Evaluate and roll out new tools, languages, and practices to keep our automation modern, maintainable, and fast.

CI / CD Test Infrastructure

• Integrate automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions...) so every commit, PR, and release gets the right feedback at the right time.
• Design test execution strategy: smoke, regression, nightly, pre-release, post-deploy — including parallelization, sharding, and selective re-runs.
• Own the test infrastructure: device farms (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, AWS Device Farm), self-hosted device labs, ephemeral test environments, and test data provisioning.
• Define and operate the test reporting pipeline: dashboards, failure triage flow, flaky-test quarantine, and root-cause analysis.

Cross-Layer Test Strategy

• Drive the test pyramid in practice: push appropriate coverage down to unit and contract tests, keep end-to-end suites lean and high-signal.
• Partner with developers to shift quality left — testability of new features, dependency injection for tests, contract tests between services.
• Drive performance, load, and basic security automation where applicable (JMeter, k6, Gatling, ZAP).
• Ensure automation results feed back into the same test management system as manual results — one coherent picture of quality, owned jointly with the Test Design Lead.

Technical Leadership

• Lead and mentor automation engineers across the QA team; review code and test design.
• Define automation KPIs (coverage, mean time to detect, mean time to triage, flake rate, suite runtime) and report them to engineering leadership.
• Partner with the Test Design Lead on which test cases to automate, automation priorities per release, and shared reporting standards.
• Plan hiring, growth, and individual development for automation engineers on the team.

• Define enterprise-wide automation standards, coding guidelines, and framework governance across QA Engineering.
• Collaborate with DevOps and Platform Engineering to continuously improve CI/CD performance, deployment quality, and automated release validation.
• Establish automation quality metrics and executive dashboards to measure release health, regression coverage, automation effectiveness, and defect leakage.
• Drive technical roadmaps for automation tooling, framework modernization, AI-assisted testing, and continuous quality engineering.
• Participate in architecture reviews to ensure new systems are designed for testability, observability, and automation from inception.
• Lead proof-of-concepts and evaluations for emerging automation technologies, AI-assisted testing tools, and cloud-based testing platforms.
• Champion engineering best practices including code reviews, design reviews, pair programming, documentation standards, and technical knowledge sharing across QA Engineering.

Skills & Experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in software QA with 2+ years leading test automation efforts.
• Deep, hands-on expertise designing and operating automation frameworks across at least two of: web (Selenium, Cypress, Playwright), mobile (Appium, XCUITest, Espresso), API (REST Assured, Postman/Newman, pytest).
• Strong programming skills in at least one of: Python, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript — able to write production-quality framework code, not just test scripts.
• Hands-on experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) including parallelization, sharding, and artifact handling.
• Solid understanding of testing strategy: test pyramid, risk-based testing, flakiness control, and effective use of mocks/stubs.
• Experience with version control workflows (Git), code review, and engineering practices applied to test code (clean code, refactoring, design patterns).
• Excellent communication skills and a track record of partnering with developers, QA engineers, and DevOps to deliver reliable automation at scale.

Nice to Have / Preferred

• Experience testing IoT, embedded, or access-control products end-to-end.
• Experience with performance testing (JMeter, k6, Gatling) or security testing fundamentals (OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite).
• Familiarity with cloud-based device farms (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, AWS Device Farm) and self-hosted device labs.
• Experience with containerization (Docker) and ephemeral test environments (Kubernetes, Testcontainers).
• Familiarity with BLE/NFC behaviour on mobile, or experience automating tests for wallet/credential apps and physical readers.
• ISTQB Advanced Level (Test Automation Engineer) or equivalent certification.

Success Profile:

The ideal candidate is:

• A strong software engineer at heart, applying production-grade engineering practices to test code.
• Pragmatic about the test pyramid and where automation adds the most value.
• A capable technical leader who mentors automation engineers and reviews their code.
• Comfortable owning CI/CD test infrastructure end-to-end.
• Comfortable working across regions and functions in a global environment (Vietnam, US, Australia).

Why you'll love working here

• Competitive salary based on experience and performance
• 13th-month salary 
• Daily lunch is provided at the office
• Free coffee, tea, and refreshments
• Full statutory insurance (social, health, unemployment)
• Annual health check-up and paid annual leaves
• Professional, international working environment

Working Location: Level 6 Khanh Hoi 2 Building 360A Ben Van Don, Vinh Hoi, Ho Chi Minh City

Safetrust is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. We offer an inclusive workplace and will not tolerate discrimination against any job candidate or employee due to age, race, religion, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, membership in an employee organization, medical condition, family history, genetic information, veteran status, marital status or parental status.