Senior Software Test Engineer

Overview We are a cutting-edge Defense Innovation Company seeking a Senior QA Engineer to join our engineering organization and raise the bar for quality across our web application portfolio. This is not a manual testing role — it is a hands-on, heavy coding position for an engineer who treats test automation as a software discipline. You will architect, build, and maintain automation frameworks with the same rigor applied to production code, with Playwright at the center of your toolkit.

You'll operate with the autonomy and pace of a startup engineer, backed by the scale and resources of an enterprise. The ideal candidate has thrived on small, fast-moving teams and knows how to deliver quality at speed without heavyweight process.

This role is ideally based near one of FTI's office locations in Chesapeake, VA, Beavercreek, OH, Colorado Springs, CO, or Northern Virginia. Candidates in these markets will receive primary consideration. Exceptional remote candidates with highly relevant experience may also be considered.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain robust end-to-end automation suites for complex web application workflows using Playwright with TypeScript/JavaScript
• Leverage frontier LLM models to increase development velocity and code quality
• Architect scalable, maintainable test frameworks and shared libraries adopted across multiple engineering teams
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines to enable fast, confident, continuous delivery
• Write production-quality code daily — page objects, fixtures, custom utilities, API test harnesses, and tooling
• Partner with developers, product managers, and DevOps to shift quality left and embed testability into design and architecture decisions
• Triage, root-cause, and drive resolution of defects and flaky tests; champion test reliability and meaningful coverage metrics
• Mentor engineers on automation best practices and code review test code with a critical eye
• Evaluate and introduce tools and practices that improve quality engineering velocity

Education/Qualifications Required Qualifications

• Must be a U.S. Citizen AND possess an active U.S. Dept. of Defense Secret security clearance with TS/SCI eligibility.
• Bachelor's degree in a STEM field (required)
• 5+ years of software quality engineering or software development experience
• Extensive, demonstrable experience using Playwright to automate workflows in modern web applications
• Strong professional experience writing JavaScript/TypeScript — you will be evaluated as a coder
• Experience working in startups or small, fast-moving teams where you owned outcomes end-to-end
• Solid understanding of CI/CD practices and integrating automated tests into build pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ADO)
• Deep knowledge of testing strategy: E2E, API, integration, and component testing trade-offs
• Strong debugging skills across the stack — browser internals, network traffic, async behavior, race conditions
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence quality practices across teams

Preferred Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science or a closely related field (greatly preferred)
• MS in Computer Science (preferred)
• Experience with cloud platforms — GCP, AWS, or Azure
• Experience with API testing, contract testing, or performance/load testing
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure-as-code
• Prior experience with scaling test automation in a large engineering organization