Staff Software Development Engineer

Are you an experienced quality engineer interested in helping to build and scale a modern software engineering organization at Hershey? We are looking for a QA Lead Engineer to define and drive quality practices across our development teams as we build new systems from the ground up.

This is a high-impact technical leadership role requiring strong expertise in test automation, quality engineering, and software delivery practices, along with the ability to operate in ambiguous environments. You will play a key role in ensuring that quality is built into our systems from the start-not added at the end.

Our teams build software across multiple domains at Hershey, including supply chain, marketing, and consumer insights. In this role, you will work closely with software engineers, product managers, and platform teams to ensure scalable, reliable, and high-quality software delivery.

Responsibilities

Define and Drive Quality Strategy

You own and drive the overall quality engineering approach for your team or product area. This includes defining test strategies, identifying risk areas, and ensuring the right balance of automation and manual testing to support reliable releases. You promote a quality-first mindset and ensure testing is integrated early into the development lifecycle.

Lead Test Automation and Quality Engineering Practices

You design and guide the implementation of scalable test automation frameworks across UI, API, and backend systems. You ensure that automated testing is integrated into CI/CD pipelines and continuously improved to increase coverage, speed, and reliability of releases.

Partner with Engineering and Product Teams

You work closely with software engineers, product managers, and designers to understand requirements, define acceptance criteria, and ensure systems are built for testability. You help translate business needs into effective test scope and quality checks, aligning quality goals with product outcomes.

Own Test Execution and Defect Management

You oversee end-to-end testing activities, including functional, integration, regression, and performance testing. You drive defect triage and resolution workflows, ensuring issues are identified early and resolved efficiently to maintain release quality.

Establish Metrics and Operational Quality

You define and track key quality metrics (e.g., test coverage, defect trends, release readiness) and communicate them clearly to stakeholders. You help establish standards for observability, reliability, and operational readiness as part of the software delivery process.

Mentor and Grow QA and Engineering Talent

You mentor QA engineers and SDETs, providing technical guidance, code reviews for test automation, and support for skill development. You help elevate quality practices across teams and foster a collaborative, high-performing engineering culture.

• 7+ years of experience in software quality engineering, test automation, or SDET roles

• Strong experience designing and implementing automated testing frameworks for web, API, or distributed systems

• Experience with modern development practices, including CI/CD, version control, and integration of automated testing into pipelines

• Deep understanding of software testing methodologies, including functional, regression, performance, and reliability testing

• Ability to work cross-functionally and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills in complex production systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating in greenfield or fast-evolving product environments

• Familiarity with modern full-stack or cloud-based systems (e.g., APIs, microservices, Azure or similar platforms)

• Experience defining quality standards or practices across teams

• Experience guiding teams in applying AI/ML or LLM-based quality techniques, such as test generation, validation of AI outputs, or reliability of AI-powered features

• Prior experience mentoring QA engineers or leading quality initiatives