About the Role
The Director of SDET is a pivotal role blending strong technical depth with strategic and people leadership.
- You will own the quality engineering vision for the organization, mentor the next generation of SDET managers and leads, and champion the adoption of AI-driven tools and practices to modernize how the organization builds, tests, and ships software.
- Responsibilities:
- > Quality Strategy & Architecture:
Own the end-to-end quality engineering vision, strategy, and roadmap across multiple product lines or business units
Establish quality gates, release readiness criteria, and CI/CD processes
Drive a "shift-left, shift-right" quality culture — embedding testability into design reviews and using production observability to close the loop
Conduct architectural reviews across new and existing products to proactively surface scalability, reliability, and performance risks
Evaluate and select tooling, frameworks, and platforms (open-source and commercial) that scale automation across teams
> AI Adoption
Lead the org's AI adoption strategy for quality engineering — building or integrating AI/ML-based testing tools to improve coverage, productivity, and defect prediction
Continuously evaluate and leverage AI for all aspects of Quality Engineering ensuring quality strategy keeps pace with how product is built
> Stakeholder & People Leadership
Partner with Engineering, Product, DevOps, and Security leadership to align quality goals with business and release objectives
Provide regular quality updates, metrics, and strategic recommendations to executive leadership
Define, set up, and monitor key quality and productivity metrics (KPIs/OKRs)
- Lead succession planning and mentor SDET Managers and Leads to build the next layer of quality leadership
- Requirements:
- 15+ years in software testing/quality engineering, including 5+ years in a Director or senior engineering leadership role
Deep expertise in test automation frameworks (Selenium, Playwright, RestAssured, etc.) and languages (Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript)
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Harness CI/CD), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)
Hands-on experience building AI/ML-based testing tools that measurably improve coverage and productivity
Solid grounding in performance testing, security testing, and other non-functional quality attributes
- Experience architecting test strategies for microservices, distributed systems, and mobile platforms
- Preferred Exposure:
- Experience presenting AI or quality-transformation initiatives at conferences
Prior experience testing high-transaction SaaS platforms (CRM, Payments, Automation, Email, Fintech, or similar)
Experience building and testing AI products using Agentic AI, including evaluation frameworks
- Contributions to open-source testing frameworks or published thought leadership on QE/AI trends
- Key Competencies:
- Quality vision and strategic execution
Non-functional testing (performance, security, reliability) and continuous delivery
Operational discipline within a fast-paced, rapid release environment
Stakeholder management across Engineering, Product, DevOps, and business functions
Team building and mentorship
Data-driven reporting of quality and productivity metrics to executive stakeholders
