Junior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

As a Junior SDET at OrderMesh Inc, you'll join our automation-first quality team and help build test coverage across a complex microservices platform (Kafka, MongoDB, REST APIs, async workflows). This is a great entry point into modern quality engineering: you'll work alongside senior SDETs and developers to write and maintain automated tests, learn how quality gates fit into CI/CD, and grow your skills in test automation, observability, and distributed systems testing. This role is about learning and contributing hands-on not about owning strategy solo with plenty of mentorship and room to grow.

What You'll Do

• Write and maintain automated tests for APIs, UI, and service-level validation using TypeScript, Node.js, and Playwright, under the guidance of senior team members.
• Support the build-out of load and resilience testing suites with Grafana k6, learning how to benchmark and stress-test distributed systems.
• Help integrate test execution into GitHub Actions pipelines, ensuring your tests run cleanly on commits, PRs, and deployments.
• Get hands-on exposure to distributed-systems testing: Kafka event flows, service mocking with Microcks, and validating contracts between services.
• Help maintain test observability dashboards in Grafana and learn to read quality metrics alongside logs and performance data.
• Perform exploratory testing to complement automated coverage and catch edge cases.
• Collaborate with developers, SREs, and product managers, and actively ask questions to build your understanding of the platform.

Requirements

• 1-2 years of experience in software testing, QA, or automation (academic projects do not count).
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tools, for example: using or building AI coding agents, agent skills, or evaluation harnesses as part of your testing or development workflow.
• Working knowledge of JavaScript/TypeScript or another modern programming language.
• Exposure to or coursework in CI/CD concepts; hands-on experience with GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps is a plus but not required.
• Some experience with, or eagerness to learn, Playwright or similar browser automation frameworks, and load testing tools like Grafana k6.
• Interest in learning about message brokers (Kafka), service meshes (Istio), and API testing, including test-driven development practices.
• Strong problem-solving mindset and attention to detail; debugging skills that you're actively developing.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience (bootcamp graduates welcome).
• Enthusiasm for automation-first testing culture and eagerness to learn from senior engineers.

Bonus Qualifications

• Exposure to Azure, Kubernetes, or containerized environments.
• Familiarity with contract testing concepts.
• Any experience with Grafana, Prometheus, or similar observability platforms.
• Interest in B2B, eCommerce, or fulfillment industries.