Lead Automation Test Engineer

We are seeking a Lead Automation Test Engineer who is hands-on, customer-facing, and focused on enabling the QA team to effectively use AI tools to improve testing speed, quality, and efficiency. This role will lead AI adoption across test automation, including test generation, Selenium-to-Playwright migration, regression optimization, failure triage, flaky test analysis, and requirements coverage gap identification.

The ideal candidate has strong automation engineering experience, practical hands-on experience with modern AI testing tools, and the ability to quickly evaluate and adapt new tools to produce measurable customer value. This individual must be able to lead and drive a team of senior automation engineers, establish reusable prompt templates, coach the team, and clearly explain and defend AI tools, framework, and migration decisions while consistently delivering on customer commitments.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead and drive a team of senior automation engineers, assigning, tracking, and following up on tasks to ensure timely, high-quality delivery.
• Own delivery of customer commitments, working closely with the team to meet agreed timelines even amid ongoing enhancements and periodic production issues, and proactively communicating any deviations to the customer.
• Lead AI enablement for the QA/testing team by evaluating, piloting, and implementing AI tools that improve productivity and automation quality.
• Establish reusable prompt templates and AI-assisted workflows for test generation, automation development, Selenium-to-Playwright migration, API testing, failure triage, flaky test analysis, and requirements coverage analysis.
• Lead modernization of the existing Selenium automation suite, including migration to Playwright using AI-assisted tools and reusable framework patterns.
• Provide hands-on automation leadership for functional, integration, API, regression, and end-to-end testing.
• Analyze the current regression suite and implement improvements to reduce flaky tests, long execution cycles, and manual triage effort.
• Use AI-assisted methods to analyze high-level requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria to identify automation coverage gaps and guide the team in closing them.
• Serve as a customer-facing technical lead who can explain, justify, and defend AI tool choices, migration strategy, framework design, and automation recommendations.
• Quickly produce prototypes, proof-of-concepts, sample migrations, and working automation to demonstrate value to the customer.
• Coach QA engineers and team members on effective use of AI tools, prompt templates, Playwright, automation standards, and quality engineering practices.
• Collaborate with developers, product owners, Scrum Masters, DevOps engineers, business stakeholders, and customer representatives in a SAFe Agile environment.
• Create and maintain concise documentation, including automation standards, AI usage guidance, prompt libraries, migration approach, and tool evaluation summaries.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Typically requires 8-10 years of related experience, including at least 5 years of hands-on test automation experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading and driving automation teams, including task planning, follow-up, and on-time delivery of customer commitments while managing competing priorities such as enhancements and production issues.
• Hands-on experience with AI-enabled testing tools such as Testim, mabl, Functionize, Applitools, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or similar tools.
• Experience creating prompt libraries, AI usage standards, or repeatable AI-assisted workflows for software testing teams.
• Experience using AI tools for test generation, automation development, test maintenance, failure analysis, regression analysis, coverage gap analysis, or productivity improvement.
• Experience evaluating emerging AI/testing tools and recommending practical adoption strategies based on value, scalability, maintainability, security considerations, and customer needs.
• Experience with automation tools and frameworks such as Selenium WebDriver/Grid, Playwright, Cucumber/Gherkin, JUnit, and TestNG.
• Experience with API/services testing tools such as Postman and REST Assured.
• Strong programming experience in one or more languages, preferably Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Python.
• Experience with manual, functional, regression, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Experience improving automation efficiency through framework design, test optimization, parallel execution, CI/CD integration, reporting, and test stabilization.
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, GitHub/Bitbucket, XML, JSON, SQL, and IDEs such as VS Code, IntelliJ, or Eclipse.
• Strong customer-facing communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts, justify recommendations, defend
• AI/tool/framework decisions, and proactively communicate delivery status and deviations.
• Strong troubleshooting skills with the ability to diagnose flaky tests, automation failures, test data issues, CI/CD issues, and environment-related problems.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies; SAFe Agile experience preferred.
• Must be self-directed, proactive, hands-on, and able to produce results with minimal supervision.
• Availability during core business hours of 9:00 AM-5:00 PM EST.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance

Preferred Qualifications:

• Candidates in the Eastern, Central, or Mountain time zones.
• Experience supporting US federal government contracts.
• One of the below certifications will be an advantage
• ISTQB/ISEB/Certied Software Testing credentials: ISTQB Certified Tester (Advanced Level - Test Analyst / Test Manager) or equivalent.
• Playwright/Selenium automation validation (preferred): vendor/community-recognized automation credential(s) for Playwright or Selenium.
• Cloud testing & infrastructure - AWS Certified Developer/DevOps Engineer, or equivalent., Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. We may consider candidates currently in H-1B status who are eligible for transfer.

The proposed salary range for this role is $160,000 to $180,000 USD. The salary range provided is a good faith estimate representative of all experience levels. Karsun considers several factors when extending an offer, including but not limited to, the role, function and associated responsibilities, a candidate’s work experience, location, education/training, and key skills.