Lead Test Automation Engineer

Symetra; Bellevue (WA); Hybrid; USD 129,000 - 215,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work arrangements

401(k) with company match

Paid time off & holidays

Company matching donations

Job summary

Symetra is seeking a Lead Test Automation Engineer to guide a small team of automation engineers and advance automation maturity across complex applications. You will design, develop, and maintain scalable automation frameworks, environments, and CI/CD integrations while collaborating with engineering, product, DevOps, and QA teams to improve test coverage and release confidence.

The role combines hands-on framework development with mentoring across delivery teams and accountability for

Qualifications

• Eight or more years of relevant test automation or quality engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining automation solutions across multiple applications, products, or services.
• Proven experience leading automation engineers and providing technical mentoring and guidance.
• Strong experience designing and governing scalable automation frameworks, including coding standards, test strategy, framework architecture, and long-term maintainability.

Responsibilities

• Lead and provide technical direction to a team of automation engineers.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable automated test strategies, frameworks, and scripts supporting API, UI, integration, functional, regression, smoke, performance, and reliability testing.
• Recommend and help standardize automation frameworks, test environments, tools, coding practices, and implementation patterns.
• Drive automation strategy, framework design, solution planning, CI/CD integration, and tooling decisions for major initiatives.
• Remain hands-on with framework development, test implementation, code reviews, debugging, and technical problem-solving.
• Mentor automation engineers, Software Test Engineers, analysts, and interns, and serve as an automation subject matter expert across delivery teams.
• Lead the consistent adoption of automation and quality engineering best practices.
• Own automation framework health, pipeline integration, execution reliability, and communication of automation risks, gaps, and progress to leadership.
• Define and track meaningful automation metrics, including coverage, execution results, stability, failure trends, and test effectiveness.
• Lead root-cause analysis for complex automation failures, framework issues, and recurring defects, and implement improvements to prevent recurrence.
• Identify and implement improvements that increase automation efficiency, maintainability, scalability, and execution speed.Partner with development, QA, DevOps, architecture, product teams, business stakeholders, and third-party vendors to support high-quality delivery.
• Communicate technical recommendations, automation health, delivery risks, and improvement opportunities to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

Skills

Lead automation

Automation frameworks

CI/CD

API testing

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

Pytest

Postman

Python

Cloud testing

Tools

Postman

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

Pytest

Job description

About the team

The team is focused on building and maturing automated testing capabilities that enable faster, higher-quality software delivery across Symetra. This role will lead a small team of automation engineers while working cross-functionally with engineering, product, DevOps, architecture, and business partners. The environment is highly collaborative, with an emphasis on innovation, continuous improvement, and implementing scalable automation solutions that increase release confidence and support business-critical applications.

About the role

The Lead Test Automation Engineer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for guiding a team of 2-3 automation engineers and advancing automation maturity across complex applications and delivery teams.

This role leads the design, development, and ongoing improvement of scalable test automation frameworks, environments, and CI/CD integrations. The individual works with minimal supervision and partners closely with engineering, product, DevOps, architecture, business subject matter experts, and QA teams to improve test coverage, reliability, performance, and release confidence.

What you will do

• Lead and provide technical direction to a team of automation engineers.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable automated test strategies, frameworks, and scripts supporting API, UI, integration, functional, regression, smoke, performance, and reliability testing.
• Recommend and help standardize automation frameworks, test environments, tools, coding practices, and implementation patterns.
• Drive automation strategy, framework design, solution planning, CI/CD integration, and tooling decisions for major initiatives.
• Remain hands-on with framework development, test implementation, code reviews, debugging, and technical problem-solving.
• Mentor automation engineers, Software Test Engineers, analysts, and interns, and serve as an automation subject matter expert across delivery teams.
• Lead the consistent adoption of automation and quality engineering best practices.
• Own automation framework health, pipeline integration, execution reliability, and communication of automation risks, gaps, and progress to leadership.
• Define and track meaningful automation metrics, including coverage, execution results, stability, failure trends, and test effectiveness.
• Lead root-cause analysis for complex automation failures, framework issues, and recurring defects, and implement improvements to prevent recurrence.
• Identify and implement improvements that increase automation efficiency, maintainability, scalability, and execution speed.Partner with development, QA, DevOps, architecture, product teams, business stakeholders, and third-party vendors to support high-quality delivery.
• Communicate technical recommendations, automation health, delivery risks, and improvement opportunities to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

Who You Are

• Eight or more years of relevant test automation or quality engineering experience.
• Significant hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining automation solutions across multiple applications, products, or services.
• Proven experience leading automation engineers and providing technical mentoring and guidance.
• Strong experience designing and governing scalable automation frameworks, including coding standards, test strategy, framework architecture, and long-term maintainability.
• Advanced experience with modern automation frameworks such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or Pytest.
• Strong API testing and automation experience using tools and technologies such as Postman, REST services, JSON, and related API validation frameworks.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, including pipeline design, execution controls, metrics, and governance.
• Strong knowledge of functional, regression, integration, end-to-end, smoke, performance, and reliability testing.
• Strong debugging, system analysis, and root-cause analysis skills, including experience diagnosing issues across distributed systems.
• Solid understanding of DevOps practices, test environment management, pipeline optimization, and test execution efficiency.
• Experience testing cloud-based applications and services in AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Demonstrated ability to work across engineering, product, DevOps, architecture, QA, and business teams.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and stakeholder-influencing skills.
• Proactive leadership mindset with ownership of automation strategy, framework quality, and continuous improvement.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with Python, Pytest, and Postman.
• Experience with Playwright or Cypress.
• Experience with Azure DevOps pipelines or GitHub Actions.
• Experience testing AWS-based applications, including serverless or container-based solutions.
• Experience with performance and reliability testing.
• Experience contributing to new solution design and architecture.
• Experience defining automation metrics and communicating quality and delivery risk to leadership.

Why Work at Symetra

Here's what some of our employees have to say about why they work at Symetra:

"I was referred to Symetra by a family friend who's been with the company for years-and I'm so glad I took their advice. Symetra truly puts its people first. I've always felt supported, not micromanaged, and that trust has helped me grow. It's a place that believes in its employees and invests in their success." - Morgan D., Sr. Unit Manager

""Symetra will spoil you. There aren't many companies that will put as much effort into you being a success as Symetra. The culture will challenge you but simultaneously put you at ease. Failure is seen as integral to the learning process so there is less reason to be fearful of it." - Kerry S., Sr. Systems Analyst

What we offer you

Benefits and Perks

We don't take a "one-size-fits-all" approach when it comes to our employees. Our programs are designed to make your life better both at work and at home.

• Flexible full-time or hybrid telecommuting arrangements
• Plan for your future with our 401(k) plan and take advantage of immediate vesting and company matching up to 6%
• Paid time away including vacation and sick time, flex days and ten paid holidays
• Give back to your community and double your impact through our company matching
• Want more details? Check out our Symetra Benefits Overview

Compensation

Salary Range: $128,700 - $214,600 plus eligibility for annual bonus program

Please review Symetra's Remote Network Minimum Requirements:

As a remote-first organization committed to providing a positive experience for