Automation Engineer - Platform Integration (Contract)

Description
REMOTE CONTRACT POSITION - 10 MONTHS
Must reside in Eastern Time Zone
The Automation Engineer builds the automated test and validation coverage required to move a recently acquired electronic-monitoring product line onto a new, strategic web-based platform. This is a fixed-term (approximately 10-month) contract role on the integration team. The engineer establishes an automated regression suite across the platform's web front end, middleware, and APIs, and builds the tooling that proves migrated customer data and device behavior are correct after each cutover rehearsal. The migration adds substantial new functionality to a platform that is today validated largely by hand; this role is what makes a repeatable, low-risk cutover possible.
Requirements
Must reside in Eastern Time Zone

• Build and maintain an automated regression suite covering the target platform's web front end, middleware services, and APIs.
• Automate validation of the gap features built to onboard the acquired customer base, working from the development team's designs and acceptance criteria.
• Build data-migration validation tooling: automated reconciliation of record counts, field-level mapping, and referential integrity between legacy applications and the target platform.
• Automate end-to-end device and event scenarios (enrollment, position and event ingestion, alerting, reporting) so every migration rehearsal can be re-run on demand rather than re-tested by hand.
• Stand up a build pipeline for the automated suites where none exists today, so they run on each build and each migration rehearsal, and report results in a clear format for program leadership.
• Automate test-data creation and environment setup and teardown so runs are repeatable and isolated.
• Triage failures, separate product defects from test defects, and file and track defects with engineering and QA teams.
• Work with the QA function to set the boundary between what is automated and what stays manual, prioritizing coverage by risk rather than by ease.
• Document the suites and hand over the framework, runbooks, and coverage map to the permanent QA team at the end of the engagement.

Formal Education, Licenses, and Certifications Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience (5+ years).
• Experience Level: 3-5+ years of dedicated test automation experience for production web applications, ideally involving systems integration or complex data migration projects.
• Automation Frameworks: Demonstrated expertise with Playwright (or modern frameworks like Cypress or Selenium) for end-to-end web interface testing.
• API & Data Testing: Experience validating RESTful APIs/middleware services, working with relational databases (PostgreSQL, SQL Server), and writing non-trivial SQL queries for data reconciliation and integrity checks.
• CI/CD Integration: Proven track record of standing up and integrating automated test suites within build and deployment pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, Azure DevOps, or Jenkins).

Knowledge and Skills Required:

• Programming Languages: Strong hands-on proficiency in JavaScript or TypeScript (familiarity with Python, C#, or Java is also acceptable).
• Test Strategy & Practices: Strong grasp of risk-based prioritization, stable selectors, deterministic test design, version control (Git), and defect triaging.
• Communication: Clear written and verbal communication skills; ability to author runbooks and report coverage/residual risk to stakeholders across geographies.

OTHER RELATED ATTRIBUTES THAT WOULD ENHANCE HIRING CONSIDERATION: These are other criteria that may enhance the hiring decision but would not rule out the candidate for consideration if not present.

• Domain experience in electronic monitoring, GPS/location tracking, telematics, IoT platforms, or public-safety/criminal-justice software.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Oracle Cloud, or Google Cloud Platform).
• Experience testing web applications and service tiers.
• Exposure to performance and load testing frameworks (e.g., k6 or JMeter) for high-volume event ingestion.
• Experience introducing test automation into manual environments and coaching permanent QA staff.
• Comfort working with an international, distributed engineering team on a tightly scheduled integration program.