Test Automation Engineer Lead

Role Overview

Test Automation Engineer Lead at Symetra — a hands-on technical leadership position guiding a small team (2–3) of automation engineers. You will drive scalable, high-quality test automation frameworks with minimal oversight and partner closely with business and technical stakeholders to improve automation maturity.

Responsibilities

• Lead a small automation team (2–3 engineers) in designing, developing, and maintaining automated testing strategies, scripts, and frameworks.
• Build and maintain automation coverage across:
  • Functional, regression, API, UI, and integration testing
• Recommend test environments, frameworks, and tool stacks.
• Mentor and coach automation engineers, analysts, and interns; act as the automation subject-matter expert across teams.
• Drive automation strategy including:
  • solution planning
  • framework design
  • CI/CD integration
  • tooling decisions
• Enforce automated testing best practices across teams.
• Troubleshoot complex automation defects and framework issues; lead root-cause analysis to prevent recurring failures.
• Own automation success metrics and end-to-end accountability for automation frameworks and CI/CD pipeline health; communicate automation risks and status to leadership.
• Identify and implement process improvements to improve efficiency, reliability, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with SMEs, development teams, QA, and external vendors; communicate regularly with senior IT and cross-functional stakeholders.

Requirements

• 8+ years of hands-on automated testing experience, including ownership or architecture of automation solutions.
• Proven ability to design and govern enterprise-grade automation frameworks and scalable test strategies with strong coding standards.
• Leadership experience partnering across engineering, product, DevOps, and architecture teams.
• Expert proficiency across multiple testing types, including unit, API, integration, end-to-end, regression, performance, and reliability testing.
• Advanced experience with Pytest, Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright, including framework optimization and extension.
• Deep API testing expertise (e.g., Postman) and ability to mentor others in API automation.
• Strong debugging, system design, and root-cause analysis skills for complex distributed systems.
• High school diploma required; BA/BS in a related field or equivalent experience preferred.

Nice to Have

• Experience expanding automation maturity across an organization (automation program/process leadership).