Principal Test Engineer

zenda; Bengaluru Urban; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

zenda, a fintech company building digital education payment solutions, is seeking a Principal Test Engineer/SDET to define and drive the organisation-wide quality engineering and test automation strategy. You will architect scalable automation frameworks, strengthen CI/CD quality gates, and lead testing across web, mobile, APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.

You will also drive performance, reliability, security, and AI-assisted testing initiatives to improve software quality and

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Test Automation, or Software Testing.
• Hands-on experience with Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or Appium.
• Strong understanding of APIs, microservices, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or GitLab CI.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the organisation-wide QA and test automation strategy.
• Architect scalable automation frameworks for web, mobile, API, and microservices testing.
• Integrate automated quality gates into CI/CD pipelines and release workflows.
• Lead testing across distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native platforms.
• Drive performance, scalability, reliability, and resilience testing.
• Adopt AI-assisted testing for test generation, optimisation, and defect analysis.
• Improve production quality through observability, monitoring, and engineering metrics.
• Ensure security, compliance, and secure testing practices across platforms.
• Mentor quality engineers and promote an automation-first engineering culture.
• Collaborate with Engineering, DevOps, SRE, Product, and Architecture teams to improve software quality.

Skills

Test Automation

Quality Engineering

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

Appium

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Docker

Kubernetes

Kafka/RabbitMQ

Redis

Datadog

Grafana

Prometheus

JMeter

Gatling

Job description

Experience: 10+ Years

Company Background

zenda is a financial technology company building digital payment solutions exclusively for schools, colleges, and nurseries. Launched in 2021, zenda serves 150,000+ parents across the Middle East and Asia and partners with leading educational institutions.

Backed by prominent investors, zenda is building scalable, secure, and reliable technology solutions to simplify education payments and support its growing global footprint.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced Principal Test Engineer / Principal SDET to define and drive our organisation-wide quality engineering and test automation strategy.

You will architect scalable automation frameworks, strengthen CI/CD quality gates, and lead testing across web, mobile, APIs, microservices, and distributed systems. You will also drive performance, reliability, security, and AI-assisted testing initiatives to improve software quality and accelerate delivery.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who can establish quality engineering standards, mentor teams, and work closely with Engineering, DevOps, SRE, Product, and Architecture to build reliable, production-ready systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the organisation-wide QA and test automation strategy.
• Architect scalable automation frameworks for web, mobile, API, and microservices testing.
• Integrate automated quality gates into CI/CD pipelines and release workflows.
• Lead testing across distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native platforms.
• Drive performance, scalability, reliability, and resilience testing.
• Adopt AI-assisted testing for test generation, optimisation, and defect analysis.
• Improve production quality through observability, monitoring, and engineering metrics.
• Ensure security, compliance, and secure testing practices across platforms.
• Mentor quality engineers and promote an automation-first engineering culture.
• Collaborate with Engineering, DevOps, SRE, Product, and Architecture teams to improve software quality.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Test Automation, or Software Testing.
• Hands-on experience with Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or Appium.
• Strong understanding of APIs, microservices, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or GitLab CI.
• Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka/RabbitMQ, Redis, and databases.
• Experience with performance testing tools such as k6, JMeter, or Gatling.
• Familiarity with observability tools such as Datadog, Grafana, or Prometheus.
• Strong understanding of security and compliance testing practices.
• Proven technical leadership, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

What Makes Someone Successful Here

• Defines quality engineering standards and drives organisation-wide adoption.
• Builds scalable automation frameworks and solves complex testing challenges.
• Balances delivery speed with reliability, security, and performance.
• Uses AI-assisted testing and modern engineering practices to improve efficiency.
• Mentors engineers and partners across teams to build a strong automation-first culture.

What We Offer

• The opportunity to shape quality engineering strategy across a growing technology platform.
• Ownership of automation architecture, testing standards, and engineering excellence.
• A collaborative, fast-paced environment that encourages innovation and continuous improvement.
• The opportunity to influence the reliability, scalability, and quality of products serving the global education and payments ecosystem.