Principal SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test)
If you have a passion for catching issues before customers do love writing rock-solid automated tests and want to help elevate our product quality at Paystone this role is for you!
As a Principal SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) youll define our automated test strategy expand test coverage and empower every engineer to ship confidently by building robust comprehensive tests.
Reporting to: VP Engineering
Department: Engineering
What Youll Be Doing:
Test Automation & Technical Leadership
- Design build and maintain robust automated test suites using Jest (API / integration) and Playwright (end-to-end cross-browser).
- Review application architecture to identify risk areas and define the right test pyramid (unit integration E2E).
- Establish and document coding standards for test automation; perform PR reviews to uphold them.
- Investigate test failures quickly triage defects and collaborate with developers on root-cause analysis.
Quality Process Improvement
- Champion shift-left testing: embed quality gates in every stage of the SDLC and CI/CD pipeline.
- Analyze flakiness execution time and coverage metrics; drive continuous optimisation.
- Introduce tooling (static analysis mutation testing visual regression etc.) when it meaningfully boosts product quality.
Cross-Team Collaboration & Facilitation
- Partner with Product Owners and Squad Leads to turn acceptance criteria into executable automated tests.
- Act as a quality mentor: run workshops pair-program on test patterns and nurture a culture of ownership.
- Review upcoming technical designs with an eye on observability and testability providing actionable feedback early in the lifecycle.
Planning & Delivery
- Estimate and prioritise test automation work in sprint planning balancing risk and velocity.
- Provide clear visibility into test coverage defect trends and release health to stakeholders.
- Ensure test environments and data are version-controlled reproducible and aligned with production.
What Were Looking For:
- Proven success improving product quality for SaaS solutions in an agile environment.
- Deep hands-on expertise with Jest and Playwright (or similar frameworks) and solid TypeScript/JavaScript skills.
- Experience integrating automated tests into cloud-based CI/CD (GitHub Actions GitLab CI etc.).
- Strong understanding of testing strategies (TDD BDD contract testing accessibility performance).
- A collaborative solution-oriented mindset with crisp confident communication.
- Passion for mentorship and driving a culture of quality across engineering teams.
Whether youre already a senior automation specialist or an experienced developer passionate about quality this role lets you broaden your impact while staying deep in the code.
Lets raise the bar on reliability together.
Required Experience:
Senior IC