Principal QA Engineer

Executive Search | Senior Technology Recruitment Consultant

The Opportunity

A leading financial technology organization is building the next generation of digital lending platforms and is seeking a Principal Quality Engineering Lead to define and elevate its quality strategy.

This is a senior, hands‑on technical role for someone who wants to shape how quality is designed, measured, and embedded across modern, cloud‑based systems. You will be a key driver of innovation, introducing AI‑powered testing practices, strengthening automation frameworks, and influencing how engineering teams deliver resilient, high‑quality software at scale.

• Define and own the quality engineering vision for complex, cloud‑native financial systems.
• Design and implement advanced test automation frameworks, including end‑to‑end and API testing.
• Introduce and scale AI‑enabled testing approaches, such as self‑healing tests, intelligent test generation, visual validation, and anomaly detection.
• Embed quality into CI/CD pipelines to provide fast, reliable feedback for engineering teams.
• Partner closely with developers, architects, Dev Ops, and product teams to ensure systems are designed for testability and resilience.
• Establish best practices, standards, and governance for automation and AI tooling across teams.
• Mentor and guide engineers, promoting shared ownership of quality.
• Review both application and test code to ensure maintainability, scalability, and performance.
• Identify and prioritize test‑related technical debt and continuously improve testing efficiency.

• 7+ years of experience in quality engineering and test automation within complex systems.
• Proven experience architecting automation frameworks, not just using them.
• Hands‑on experience with or strong exposure to AI‑driven testing tools and concepts.
• Experience with modern test frameworks such as Cypress or Playwright.
• Solid understanding of microservices, event‑driven architectures, and distributed systems.
• Experience working with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong database experience (SQL and No
  
  SQL).
• Cloud experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Ability to influence without authority and communicate complex technical ideas clearly.

• Experience in lending, mortgage, or regulated financial environments.
• Exposure to contract testing, shift‑left testing, or CQRS‑based systems.
• Experience testing event streaming or message‑based systems.

• High‑impact, principal‑level role with influence across multiple engineering teams.
• Opportunity to define the future of quality engineering using AI and automation.
• Collaborative, engineering‑led culture that values innovation and continuous learning.
• Hybrid work environment with strong focus on work‑life balance.