Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Role overview

Comcarde Ltd is looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to champion engineering-led quality. You will work both centrally (owning standards and frameworks) and embedded with development teams to help them ship high-quality software frequently with confidence.

Responsibilities

• Automation & framework engineering:
  • Design, maintain, and evolve automation frameworks across the full testing pyramid:
    • Component, Integration, Contract (Pact), E2E, and Performance/Load testing.
• Embedded partnership:
  • Partner with development teams during refinement, build, and release to embed quality criteria into sprint planning and definitions of done.
  • Coach teams on automation, testability, observability, and quality-first design.
• CI/CD optimisation:
  • Ensure pipelines are fast, reliable, and CI-native.
  • Implement meaningful quality gates and reduce feedback loops.
• Engineering for testability:
  • Suggest architectural improvements to enhance testability.
  • Advocate patterns that support robust contract testing.
• Observability & reliability:
  • Strengthen monitoring and alerting standards.
  • Participate in incident post-mortems and turn learnings into automated safeguards.
• Metrics-driven growth:
  • Use DORA metrics to track quality trends and drive continuous improvement.
• Leadership & maturity:
  • Help define the organisation-wide quality strategy.
  • Design the high-level architecture of the testing ecosystem.
  • Mentor junior engineers and act as a thought leader for quality-first delivery.

Requirements

• Recent professional experience as an SDET or equivalent.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals with professional proficiency in Java, TypeScript, or similar modern languages.
• Proven experience building and maintaining multi-layer automation frameworks (Component, Integration, Contract/Pact, E2E, Performance/Load).
• Hands-on CI/CD pipeline experience, including automated quality gates and optimising for fast feedback.
• Ability to independently debug issues and influence product design to maximise testability.
• Ability to coach unit/component testing best practices.
• Experience suggesting architectural improvements for testability, observability, and logging in cloud-native environments.
• Passion for monitoring/alerting with experience converting incident learnings into systemic safeguards.
• Communication skills to coach teams and drive quality-first delivery and engineering maturity.

Nice to have

• Implementing and tracking DORA metrics:
  • Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, Time to Restore Service.