SDET Engineer - Chennai
Photon · India
- Role Summary
- We are seeking a highly skilled Senior SDET to design, scale, and maintain our mobile application automated testing infrastructure. In this role, you will focus heavily on mobile UI automation and backend API validation. You will treat test automation as production-quality code, ensuring high execution reliability and seamless integration into development pipelines, while leveraging AI-powered platforms to accelerate script development and optimize test execution.
Core Responsibilities
- Mobile Test Architecture: Designs, builds, and maintains scalable, reusable automated test frameworks specifically for mobile applications utilizing Appium as the primary automation engine.
- API Testing Integration: Engineers robust automated validation for backend API services interacting with mobile front-ends to ensure seamless data contract adherence.
- AI-Assisted Automation: Leverages enterprise generative AI platforms and coding assistants to accelerate automation scripting, generate synthetic test data, and optimize test workflows.
- Intelligent Test Execution: Utilizes AI-driven test analysis platforms to identify flaky scripts, analyze execution failures, and implement self-healing capabilities within the mobile framework.
- Production-Quality Code: Writes highly maintainable, well-architected, peer-reviewed test code using Java or JavaScript/TypeScript, promoting coding best practices across the team.
- CI/CD Pipeline Integration: Partners with Engineering and DevOps to integrate automated mobile and API test suites into CI/CD pipelines for fast, reliable releases.
- Shift-Left Advocacy: Drives shift-left testing practices, influencing engineering design decisions early to maximize application testability and long-term maintainability.
- Quality Metrics Leadership: Defines and monitors quality metrics (test coverage, defect trends, flaky test rates, and release readiness) and reports insights to engineering leads.
- Test Data Management: Establishes robust test data management and mock/virtualization strategies to ensure consistent mobile testing environment readiness.
- Mentorship: Mentors and provides technical guidance to junior and mid-level SDETs, running comprehensive code reviews and pair-programming sessions.
Qualifications
- 8+ years of professional experience in software development or test automation engineering.
- Mandatory Mobile Frameworks: Deep, hands-on proficiency in building mobile automation frameworks using Appium.
- Platform Expertise: Exceptionally strong automation skills in at least one primary mobile operating system (iOS or Android).
- Language Proficiency: Strong proficiency in Java and/or JavaScript / TypeScript.
- API Testing Mastery: Extensive experience testing and automating RESTful APIs supporting mobile applications.
- AI Engineering Tools: Demonstrated experience using AI coding assistants or AI-augmented test automation platforms to write, debug, and maintain test scripts.
- CI/CD Infrastructure: Strong experience embedding test scripts within CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).
Nice to Have (Plusses)
- Native Testing Frameworks: Hands-on experience with native mobile automation tools like XCUITest (iOS) or Espresso (Android).
- Domain Knowledge: Prior business knowledge or testing experience in the E-commerce or Pharmacy/Healthcare sectors.
- Innovation Execution: Proactively evaluates new mobile tooling, device farm cloud solutions, and generative AI testing frameworks to improve team velocity.