Staff Software Quality Engineer

The Hershey Company; Maharashtra; On-site; INR 1,400,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

The Hershey Company is hiring a QA Lead Engineer in Pune, India. In this role, you will define and drive quality practices across development teams, ensuring a quality-first mindset while implementing test strategies and automation frameworks.

You'll collaborate with engineering, product, and design teams, oversee end-to-end testing activities, and mentor QA engineers to elevate quality practices across the organization. The ideal candidate should have over 7 years of experience in software quality engineering with a strong focus on test automation.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in software quality engineering, test automation, or SDET roles.
• Strong experience designing and implementing automated testing frameworks.
• Ability to work cross-functionally and communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive overall quality engineering approach and test strategies.
• Design scalable test automation frameworks across UI, API, and backend systems.
• Oversee end-to-end testing activities, including functional and performance testing.

Skills

Test automation frameworks design

Cross-functional communication

Problem-solving in production systems

Software testing methodologies

Tools

CI/CD tools

Cloud platforms (e.g., Azure)

Job description

Overview

Are you an experienced quality engineer interested in helping to build and scale a modern software engineering organization at Hershey? We are looking for a QA Lead Engineer to define and drive quality practices across our development teams as we build new systems from the ground up.

Location

Pune, India

Responsibilities

Define and Drive Quality Strategy

You own and drive the overall quality engineering approach for your team or product area. This includes defining test strategies, identifying risk areas, and ensuring the right balance of automation and manual testing to support reliable releases. You promote a quality-first mindset and ensure testing is integrated early into the development lifecycle.

Lead Test Automation and Quality Engineering Practices

You design and guide the implementation of scalable test automation frameworks across UI, API, and backend systems. You ensure that automated testing is integrated into CI/CD pipelines and continuously improved to increase coverage, speed, and reliability of releases.

Partner with Engineering and Product Teams

You work closely with software engineers, product managers, and designers to understand requirements, define acceptance criteria, and ensure systems are built for testability. You help translate business needs into effective test scope and quality checks, aligning quality goals with product outcomes.

Own Test Execution and Defect Management

You oversee end-to-end testing activities, including functional, integration, regression, and performance testing. You drive defect triage and resolution workflows, ensuring issues are identified early and resolved efficiently to maintain release quality.

Establish Metrics and Operational Quality

You define and track key quality metrics (e.g., test coverage, defect trends, release readiness) and communicate them clearly to stakeholders. You help establish standards for observability, reliability, and operational readiness as part of the software delivery process.

Mentor and Grow QA and Engineering Talent

You mentor QA engineers and SDETs, providing technical guidance, code reviews for test automation, and support for skill development. You help elevate quality practices across teams and foster a collaborative, high-performing engineering culture.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in software quality engineering, test automation, or SDET roles
• Strong experience designing and implementing automated testing frameworks for web, API, or distributed systems
• Experience with modern development practices, including CI/CD, version control, and integration of automated testing into pipelines
• Deep understanding of software testing methodologies, including functional, regression, performance, and reliability testing
• Ability to work cross-functionally and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills in complex production systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating in greenfield or fast-evolving product environments
• Familiarity with modern full-stack or cloud-based systems (e.g., APIs, microservices, Azure or similar platforms)
• Experience defining quality standards or practices across teams
• Experience guiding teams in applying AI/ML or LLM-based quality techniques, such as test generation, validation of AI outputs, or reliability of AI-powered features
• Prior experience mentoring QA engineers or leading quality initiatives