Test Automation Engineer

Covalen; Galway; On-site; EUR 75,000 - 105,000; Full time

Job summary

Covalen is hiring an experienced Test Automation Engineer to design, build and own automated testing for our B2B SaaS platform. You will replace manual test execution with reliable automation integrated into CI/CD pipelines and raise the overall quality engineering standard of the team.

You will design frameworks for UI, API and end-to-end tests, automate test data and environments, monitor suite health and mentor teammates.

Qualifications

• 4+ years’ experience in test automation within a commercial software or B2B SaaS environment.
• Hands-on experience with modern UI automation tooling such as Playwright, Selenium or Cypress.
• Demonstrable experience automating API and integration testing (e.g. REST Assured, Postman/Newman, pytest).
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, ideally Azure DevOps, and with source control workflows.
• Solid grounding in test design: risk-based prioritisation and coverage analysis.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain automated test frameworks covering functional, regression, API and end-to-end scenarios.
• Develop and maintain automated test suites for web applications, REST APIs and platform integrations.
• Identify manual tests suitable for automation and convert them with priority by risk and effort.
• Build and manage test data, environments and fixtures for reliable execution.
• Integrate automated test execution into CI/CD pipelines to provide quality feedback on every build.
• Monitor suite health, reduce flaky tests and keep execution times reasonable.
• Collaborate with developers, DevOps and product stakeholders to define acceptance criteria and testable requirements.
• Mentor colleagues in automation and promote quality ownership.

Skills

Test automation

UI automation tools

API testing

CI/CD

Azure DevOps

Agile

English communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in tech or related field

Tools

Playwright

Selenium

Cypress

REST Assured

Postman/Newman

pytest

Job description

You will design, build and own the automated testing capability underpinning releases for a B2B SaaS platform serving enterprise clients.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will be responsible for replacing manual test execution with reliable, maintainable automation integrated into CI/CD pipelines, and for raising the overall quality engineering standard of the team.

Key Responsibilities:

Automation design and development

• Design, build and maintain automated test frameworks covering functional, regression, API and end-to-end scenarios.
• Develop and maintain automated test suites for web applications, REST APIs and platform integrations.
• Identify existing manual test cases suitable for automation, prioritise them by risk and effort, and systematically convert them.
• Build and manage the test data, environments and fixtures needed to run suites reliably and repeatably.

CI/CD and quality engineering

• Integrate automated test execution into CI/CD pipelines so that quality feedback is delivered on every build.
• Define and maintain quality gates, coverage targets and release criteria alongside engineering leads.
• Monitor suite health, investigate and eliminate flaky tests, and keep execution times within acceptable limits.
• Report on quality metrics — coverage, pass rates, defect escape rates — and use them to drive improvement.

Quality assurance and collaboration

• Work with developers, DevOps and product stakeholders to define acceptance criteria and testable requirements from the outset.
• Perform exploratory and risk-based testing where automation is not appropriate, and carry out root-cause analysis on escaped defects.
• Support non-functional testing, including performance, load and security-related validation.
• Mentor colleagues in automation practice and promote quality ownership across the wider team.
• Evaluate and adopt new tooling, including AI-assisted testing approaches, where it demonstrably improves coverage or reduces effort.

Education:

• A technology, engineering or computer science related bachelor’s degree, or equivalent demonstrable experience.

Mandatory Candidate Requirements:

• 4+ years’ experience in test automation within a commercial software or B2B SaaS environment.
• Hands-on experience with modern UI automation tooling such as Playwright, Selenium or Cypress.
• Demonstrable experience automating API and integration testing (for example REST Assured, Postman/Newman, pytest or equivalent).
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, ideally Azure DevOps, and working with source control and branching workflows.
• Solid grounding in test design: risk-based prioritisation, coverage analysis, and knowing what should and should not be automated.
• Experience working in an Agile development environment.
• Native proficiency in spoken and written English, with the ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable but not Mandatory:

• Performance and load testing experience (JMeter, k6, Locust or similar).
• Working knowledge of Azure cloud services, containerisation and infrastructure-as-code.
• SQL and database testing experience.
• Experience with AI-assisted test generation, maintenance or triage tooling.
• Security testing awareness (for example OWASP fundamentals).
• ISTQB or equivalent certification.

What about you?

This is the most important part. The role suits an engineer who takes genuine ownership of quality, is curious about why defects occur rather than just that they did, and who wants to build something durable rather than patch what exists.

You will be joining a collaborative and highly regarded team where engineering standards are taken seriously, so we are looking for people who understand what it takes to sustain that.