Lead/Senior Full Stack UI & API Automation QA Engineer

This role is a Lead/Senior Full Stack UI & API Automation QA Engineer and is on the QA CoE Team and is crucial for advancing QA automation and quality strategy, offering leadership and technical expertise in UI and API testing. The QA Automation Engineer will design scalable automation frameworks using modern and AI-driven solutions, mentor team members, and integrate quality into CI/CD pipelines and cloud environments. Responsibilities include leading proof-of-concept projects, promoting best practices, and enhancing automated testing as a code-focused, DevOps-integrated professional.
The position collaborates with Engineering, Product, DevOps, AI, and Security teams to ensure applications are reliable, scalable, and production ready.

Lead and support quality assurance programs and processes in alignment with QA strategy and deliverables in an Agile/Scrum environment with minimal guidance. Responsible for providing feedback and coaching on artifacts developed during requirements and analysis phase within client projects; authoring test cases/scripts; and performing test execution. Demonstrate the company's core values of respect, honesty, integrity, diversity, inclusion and safety.

- Guide testing efforts involving coaching, mentoring, code reviews, and contributing to improvements to frameworks, tools, processes and best practices
- Provide oversight to ensure automation test suites are well maintained and operational
- Provide accurate estimates for QA efforts including test case design/scripting, test data management, execution and defect correction
- Understand Kroger's core quality metrics and how to utilize them to foster quality improvement
- Design, develop, analyze, document and support CoE activities that drive continuous improvement across the organization
- Manage quality assurance and testing projects, schedules, tasks and deliverables
- Communicate quality issues and recommendations to improve quality to senior level management
- Consult with technical development leads on feature designs to ensure product testability and identify coverage gaps in existing test tools or technologies
- Develop and maintain software quality dashboards aligned with committed software quality SLAs and KPIs
- Automate test cases and functional libraries using open source and commercial tools
- Lead and coach CI/CD and SDLC/TDLC concepts: code review best practices, code coverage analysis, continuous test and delivery
- Consult on automation tools/techniques, feasibility/implementation, process improvements and maintenance plans
- Drive creative and innovative technical concepts to automate workflows from ideation to operational tools, designed with the capability to be reusable, maintainable and efficient
- Support complex systems with significant integration points, external Third-Party systems through RESTful, and other protocol APIs and multi-step authorization factors
- Develop and/or recommend tools to assist test engineers in test planning, execution and reporting
- Exhibit strong stakeholder relationship, interpersonal, analytical and problem-solving skills
- Must be able to perform the essential job functions of this position with or without reasonable accommodation

• Drive and execute the Automation (UI/API) QA strategy, establish the vision and direction for automation-focused quality assurance
• Provide hands-on leadership and promote best practices in automation.
• Lead and mentor SOA and UI automation teams for technical growth.
• Oversee QA roadmap, maintain standards, and manage tool migrations (e.g., Azure).
• Deliver AI-driven automation innovation and implement pilots.
• Integrate automation into CI/CD pipelines and manage QA tools.
• Optimize enterprise-wide tools license management and resolve issues.
• Coordinate recruitment, hiring, and onboarding for automation expertise.
   

Minimum
- Any experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment 
- Any experience with continuous integration tools
- Any proven experience managing test environments and data
- Any proven experience with defect management and tools
- 1 year of experience using SQL or other query methods to validate data changes in the database
- 3+ years of experience utilizing risk-based testing techniques
- 3+ years of experience with test case management and tools
- 5+ years of experience working with automated test frameworks and runners
- 5+ years of experience developing and executing automated test scripts
- 5+ years of experience leading QA Process improvements
- 8+ years of experience in a QA and software testing position
- Experience mentoring and coaching others (remote & onsite)

Desired
- Bachelor's Degree Computer Science or related information technology field 
- Any experience with creating and using test data management tools
- Any experience working in environments utilizing the OKR work process
- Any experience with automated testing in a cloud environment
- Familiarity with NoSQL Databases

•  7+ years of experience writing Selenium/playwright tests in Java or Javascript using ( Web Driver ,typescript, Web Driver IO, Marathon , Appium etc.)
• 7+ years of hands-on, automation testing of integration web services ( REST and SOAP protocols) that include database validations using tools like ( Karate , Postman, Rest Assured , SOAP UI Pro etc.)
• Demonstrated experience in XML, XSD, XPath, MQTT, Topics, Kafka, HTTP, HTTPS, JSON, Bytes array message format
• 5+ years of experience with test runners (Junit, TestNG, Mocha, Jasmine)
• 5+ years of experience with CI tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity, GitLab)
• 3+ years of experience with Selenium Grid
• 3+ years of working in an Agile/Scrum methodology
• 2+ years of using Jira for defect tracking
• Experience with cloud-native architectures like Azure & GCP and DevOps 
• Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Strong SQL & back-end database validation skills
• Experience in SOA frameworks, processes, strategies, and approaches
• Prefer Selenium/Playwright being utilized in the current/most recent project
• Prefer Agile/SAFe methodology being utilized in the current/most recent project