Sr SDET/QA Architect

Software Guidance & Assistance, Inc., (SGA), is searching for a Sr SDET/QA Architect for a right to hire assignment with one of our premier Financial Services clients in Mississauga, ON .
Responsibilities :
Seeking a visionary and hands-on Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) / Quality Engineering Architect to define, champion, and drive the global quality engineering strategy across multi-tier, high-throughput trading platforms.
In this role, you will lead the technical vision for automated quality gates, design scalable test automation frameworks from scratch, integrate cutting-edge AI-driven testing tooling, and establish robust in-sprint automation and performance engineering practices across global distributed teams. Acting as both a principal architect and a hands-on technical mentor, you will partner closely with Development, Architecture, Product Management, and Business stakeholders to ensure resiliency, low latency, and zero-defect delivery across complex enterprise ecosystems.

• Architectural Strategy & Framework Engineering
  • Enterprise Test Architecture: Design, build, and maintain next-generation, cloud-native test automation frameworks from scratch using Core Java, BDD/TDD principles, and modern architectural design patterns.
  • In-Sprint Automation Acceleration: Spearhead shift-left quality practices, enabling engineering squads to achieve true in-sprint test automation for UI, microservices, and distributed streaming/messaging pipelines.
  • AI & Intelligent Testing Integration: Evaluate, integrate, and scale AI/ML-assisted testing solutions (e.g., generative AI for synthetic test data generation, predictive quality gates, self-healing test automation, and intelligent test impact analysis).
  • Multi-Tier & Service-Level Automation: Architect robust API and microservice testing frameworks (REST, gRPC, WebSockets, Kafka/messaging queues) using Rest Assured, Mocking frameworks, and contract testing (Pact).
  • Data Architecture & Validation: Architect comprehensive data validation frameworks capable of validating complex financial data pipelines, data consistency, and transactional integrity across relational (Oracle/PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB) databases.
• Performance Engineering & Non-Functional Architecture
  • End-to-End Performance Strategy: Formulate and execute non-functional testing strategies encompassing load, stress, spike, endurance, and latency benchmarking using JMeter, Gatling, or distributed cloud performance engines.
  • Observability & Bottleneck Identification: Analyze system bottlenecks across CPU, memory, database query execution, network latency, and JVM performance to provide actionable optimization recommendations to core engineering teams.
  • Resilience & Chaos Engineering: Implement resilience, failover, and high-availability testing paradigms across cloud and containerized environments.
• Continuous Delivery & Quality Gates
  • Cloud & CI/CD Pipeline Architecture: Deeply embed automated quality gates into enterprise CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Bitbucket Pipelines, Tekton, GitHub Actions, Harness) across containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift).
  • Continuous Quality Analytics: Define and instrument automated metrics and dashboards reflecting code quality, test coverage, defect leakage, MTTR, and test execution efficiency.
• Technical Leadership & Global Governance
  • Global Team Technical Leadership: Provide technical direction and architectural governance to SDETs and QE engineers globally (bridging North America and APAC teams).
  • Standards & Best Practices: Establish enterprise-wide quality benchmarks, coding standards for test repositories, code review policies, and test artifact reusability guidelines.
  • Stakeholder Alignment: Collaborate with Global Product Owners, Business Analysts, Enterprise Architects, and Development Leads for comprehensive test planning, release coordination, and risk assessment.

Required Skills :

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8-12+ years of progressive experience in software development and quality engineering, with at least 3+ years in a Lead SDET, Principal SDET, or QA Architect capacity.
• Domain Background: Proven track record in Financial Services, Capital Markets, FinTech, or low-latency Trading Platforms with an understanding of trading workflows, order management, and financial data flows.
• Core Programming & Design: Expert-level proficiency in Core Java (collections, multithreading, concurrency, OOP design patterns).
• Framework Design: Demonstrated track record of building scalable, maintainable test frameworks from the ground up (Custom hybrid frameworks, Cucumber BDD, TestNG/JUnit).
• API & Service Testing: Deep expertise in RESTful API testing, service virtualization, contract testing, and tools such as Rest Assured, Postman/Newman, and WireMock.
• UI Automation: Extensive hands-on experience in Selenium WebDriver, Playwright, or Cypress with design patterns like Page Object Model (POM) and Screenplay pattern.
• Performance Testing & Engineering: Solid hands-on background in JMeter, performance profiling, load injection architecture, and identifying system capacity limits.
• Database & Data Validation: Strong query formulation and automated verification capabilities across SQL (Oracle, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB).
• CI/CD & DevOps: Strong hands-on experience integrating automated suites into CI/CD pipelines with Git, Bitbucket, Jenkins/Tekton/Harness, and containerization tools (Docker, Kubernetes).
• AI Tooling & Innovation: Practical exposure to or active implementation of AI-assisted testing tools, LLM-driven test case generation, and automated self-healing scripts.
• Behavioral Competencies & Leadership Attributes
  • Strategic Vision with Hands-on Execution: Ability to define long-term architectural roadmaps while remaining technically agile and capable of diving into framework code.
  • Influence & Cross-Functional Collaboration: Proven ability to build consensus across distributed engineering teams, bridging regional and time-zone differences.
  • Culture of Innovation: Proactive mindset in evaluating emerging technologies, GenAI testing tools, and industry trends to keep the QA organization at peak efficiency.
  • Quality Advocacy & Ownership: High sense of accountability for product reliability, stability, and client experience in mission-critical environments.
  • Mentorship & Coaching: Passion for upskilling SDETs and manual QA engineers into advanced automation practitioners.

Preferred Skills :

• Certifications (Advantageous):
  • Certified Software Test Architect / ISTQB Advanced Level (Test Automation Engineer / Technical Test Analyst).
  • AWS / Google Cloud Platform Cloud Architecture or Developer Certifications.
  • Java SE Professional Developer Certification.
• Prior background as a full-time Software Development Engineer (Java/Spring Boot).
• Experience with message brokers and event-driven architectures (Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, IBM MQ).
• Familiarity with Contract Testing (Pact framework) and Service Mesh architectures.
• Experience with Cloud native platforms (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or OpenShift/Kubernetes).
• Familiarity with Security testing fundamentals (DAST/SAST integration into pipelines).

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SGA is a technology and resource solutions provider driven to stand out. We are a women-owned business. Our mission: to solve big IT problems with a more personal, boutique approach. Each year, we match consultants like you to more than 1,000 engagements. When we say let's work better together, we mean it. You'll join a diverse team built on these core values: customer service, employee development, and quality and integrity in everything we do. Be yourself, love what you do and find your passion at work. Please find us at .
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