Principal, QA Engineer

Job Purpose

The Principal QA Engineer plays a critical role in shaping and executing robust testing strategies-both manual and automated-to ensure the delivery of high-quality, next-generation trading tools that integrate real-time cross-asset data, global news, and analytics within a unified platform. This role also involves actively contributing to issue resolution, performing complex quality assurance tasks, and providing strategic recommendations to management, all while driving continuous improvement across QA processes. The QA Engineer will be an integral part of the technology team, overseeing and participating in all phases of the quality assurance process.

Responsibilities

• Requirement Analysis & Test Planning: Review and analyze functional and non-functional requirements to evaluate their impact on applications and derive comprehensive test cases and scenarios accordingly.
• Project & Team Collaboration: Contribute to QA planning and execution by managing assigned tasks or QA projects, mentoring junior and senior engineers and collaborating with technical leads and product managers during product requirement evaluations.
• Test Documentation & Reporting: Create clear, complete and well-organized documentation including bug reports, test cases, test plans and status reports to ensure visibility and traceability of QA efforts.
• Environment Setup & Maintenance: Participate in the setup, deployment and ongoing maintenance of QA test environments, ensuring they are stable and representative of production systems.
• Test Case Reviews & Mentorship: Review test cases authored by junior QA engineers, provide constructive feedback and help develop effective testing strategies aligned with quality objectives.
• Test Automation Design & Strategy: Collaborate with the team to review product architecture, design and implement automation solutions that improve test efficiency, accuracy and coverage.
• Automation Execution & Optimization: Work closely with QA engineers to build and maintain a robust library of automated tests, reducing manual efforts while improving overall test repeatability and reliability.
• Process Improvement & QA Governance: Partner with QA leadership to document and refine QA processes, implement best practices and continuously improve quality standards across projects.
• Release & Production Support: Provide QA support during production releases, including validating deployments and assisting in identifying and resolving post-release issues.
• Quality Advocacy & Problem Solving: Maintain a strong quality mindset with a break-it to make-it better attitude, while also being a proactive problem solver who contributes to root cause analysis and continuous improvement.

Knowledge and Experience

The candidate must be well-versed in Quality Assurance concepts, practices and tools, and will rely on their extensive experience and judgment to strategize and achieve objectives. Candidates must be capable of reviewing software applications objectively, work with stakeholders to understand requirements, collaborate with Developers to understand the application architecture and nature of code changes to evaluate impact, and assist in debugging and enhancing applications. The candidate must have:

• 10+ years of related work experience.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to work on multiple projects at same time.
• Experience with mainstream defect tracking tools and test management tools.
• Proficient in any of the programming languages including Java, Python, SQL, and JavaScript/TS, with hands-on experience in building and testing backend and frontend components.
• Strong experience in designing, executing and maintaining automated and manual tests for REST/SOAP APIs.
• Experienced in UI automation for both browser and desktop applications using tools such as Selenium and Playwright (for web) and UFT and Squish (for desktop and hybrid applications).
• Experience in designing and executing performance and security tests using tools like JMeter, BURP suite or similar.
• Experience using test result reporting tools like Allure, Extent Reports or similar
• Well-versed in Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Azure DevOps. Also experienced in using Chocolatey for managing Windows-based dependencies and packages in CI pipelines and familiar with Coinbase CI/CD standards for secure and compliant deployment practices in financial environments.
• Skilled in version control systems like Git and experienced with repository management platforms such as Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab for collaborative development and code management.

Desired Knowledge and Experience

• Experience in the Financial Industry (trading tools with real-time cross-asset data and fixed income is preferred).
• B.S. / M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Math or equivalent