Director Test Engineering Lead Wholesale Credit Risk Technology

Citigroup; Irving (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Citi's Wholesale Credit Risk Technology organization seeks a Test Engineering Lead (Director) to own and drive the quality engineering strategy for the Helios platform, Citi's strategic credit risk management ecosystem.

This is a hands-on, technically credible leadership role guiding a global QE team and acting as a change agent in modern test automation and AI-driven testing approaches.

Qualifications

• Leading a global testing organization and driving automation strategy.
• Shifting from manual regression to AI-augmented testing.
• Partnering with Development, SRE, Product, and Business Analysis lines.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a global QE team across NAM, EMEA, APAC.
• Own end-to-end test automation roadmap for Helios across API/UI/integration tests.
• Drive GenAI-enabled testing capabilities and governance for AI-generated artifacts.
• Oversee budgeting, headcount, and vendor transitions for automation engineering.

Skills

Global team leadership

Budget & headcount

Governance & strategy

People leadership

GenAI adoption

Tools

Cucumber/Gherkin BDD

Playwright/TypeScript

Selenium

FAST test infrastructure

Zephyr

Octane

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Position Overview

Citi's Wholesale Credit Risk (WCR) Technology organization is seeking a Test Engineering Lead (Director, C15) to own and drive the quality engineering strategy for the Helios platform - Citi's strategic credit risk management ecosystem spanning Credit Review, Credit Approvals, Collateral, Covenants, Helios Lynx, and related applications.

This is a hands-on, technically credible leadership role for an individual who can operate simultaneously as a people leader of a global testing organization and as a technical change agent who personally understands (and can demonstrate) modern test automation and emerging GenAI-driven testing approaches. The successful candidate will be the architect of Helios's transformation from a largely manual, high-touch regression model toward a highly automated, AI-augmented, continuously-testing operating model - directly improving speed-to-production, defect containment, and cost efficiency for one of Citi's most business-critical credit platforms.

This role will partner closely with Development, SRE, Product, and Business Analysis leads across the Helios program.

Business Context

Helios underpins Citi's Wholesale Credit Risk workflows - credit approvals, risk rating, collateral management, limits, and covenants - for institutional clients globally. As GenAI accelerates the pace and complexity of software change across the platform, the QE organization must scale test coverage and confidence without a proportional increase in headcount .

Current strategic priorities that this role will directly own or heavily influence include:

• Driving overall regression automation coverage toward and beyond a 90%+ automation target , up from a current baseline in the mid-to-high 80s.
• Reducing multi-day manual regression cycles (e.g., Helios Lynx, currently 5+ business days with 8-10 people) down to hours , through automation and parallelization on Citi's FAST test infrastructure.
• Standing up GenAI-enabled testing capabilities (e.g., agentic test authoring, AI-assisted defect triage, AI-generated test packs) as a core capability of the testing organization - not a side experiment.
• Reducing the manual test case backlog to fewer than 500 test cases.
• Improving defect containment - reducing UAT/production defect ratios, shortening average defect detection time, and systematically mapping production Problem tickets (PRBs) back into automated regression coverage to prevent recurrence.
• Leading the target-state operating model transition where automation engineering and E2E/governance functions are centralized under QE, while development teams take on greater ownership of SIT-level integration testing.
• Managing headcount, budget, and vendor/contractor transition (including offboarding of prior managed-service automation partners and scaling of a ring-fenced, global automation engineering team).

Key Responsibilities

Global Team Leadership

Lead, mentor, and grow a global, cross-regional team of software testing professionals (SDETs, automation engineers, manual/functional testers, and test leads) spanning NAM, EMEA, and APAC.

Define career paths, performance goals, and skills-uplift programs to shift the organization's skill mix from manual testing toward automation engineering and AI-augmented testing.

Own headcount planning, budget management, and the transition from third-party managed testing services to a ring-fenced, sustainable internal/blended automation engineering team.

Act as the senior QE voice in governance forums, steering committees, and Senior Technology Management reviews.

Test Automation Strategy & Execution

Own the end-to-end test automation roadmap for Helios, spanning API (Cucumber/Gherkin BDD), UI (Playwright/TypeScript, Selenium), and integration/E2E test suites, executed on Citi's FAST test infrastructure.

Drive automation coverage from current levels toward the 90%+ target, systematically eliminating “manual only” and “manual pending” backlog categories.

Establish and enforce test data management, environment stability, and production-representative test data strategies (including redacted production data refresh cycles) to eliminate flaky, low-confidence test results.

Oversee migration and modernization of test management tooling (e.g., Zephyr to Octane) and reporting/dashboarding (FAST feature tag reporting, requirements coverage, regression dashboards).

GenAI & Testing Innovation - Agent of Change

Serve as the primary driver and evangelist for GenAI adoption within the testing lifecycle - including AI-assisted test case generation, AI-augmented code/test review (e.g., GitHub Copilot), agentic development platforms (e.g., Devin), and AI-powered QA workspaces (e.g., Stylus, Friday.ai).

Define governance and quality guardrails for AI-generated test artifacts, ensuring all AI-authored tests are validated before being promoted into regression suites.

Identify, pilot, and scale new GenAI-based testing solutions that measurably improve timeliness (faster regression