Sr. Test Engineer

Ellumen, Inc.; Silver Spring (MD); Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Ellumen is seeking a Sr. Test Engineer to lead automated testing across a cloud platform hosted in AWS GovCloud, supporting 300+ applications and 130+ monthly production releases.

You will validate changes through comprehensive automated testing within CI/CD pipelines, including unit, integration, regression, performance, and security testing, while mentoring junior engineers and driving test automation improvements.

Qualifications

• Experience leading test automation for complex cloud platforms in Federal or enterprise environments.
• Hands-on design and implementation of automated test suites within CI/CD pipelines for containerized, Kubernetes-based apps.
• Proficiency with Selenium, JUnit, TestNG, Cypress, or equivalent.
• Experience with performance testing tools like JMeter, Gatling, Locust.
• Experience with security testing integration (SAST, DAST, SCA) in CI/CD.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes/EKS testing considerations including pod health and upgrades.
• Experience with IaC testing and validation practices.
• Familiarity with disaster recovery and failover testing, tabletop exercises, and live drills.
• Experience with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI) and artifact management (Nexus).
• Knowledge of Git/Bitbucket and Agile or SAFe environments.
• ISTQB Advanced Test Automation Engineer or equivalent certification preferred.
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer or equivalent certification preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of automated testing strategies integrated into CI/CD across sandbox, staging, and production environments.
• Develop and maintain automated test suites for platform services and hosted applications.
• Ensure environment segregation with validated testing gates before production deployment.
• Design and execute post-deployment verification testing and document results.
• Develop and maintain test automation frameworks supporting 130+ monthly releases across 3,000+ pipelines.
• Implement container image vulnerability scanning and IaC scanning within CI/CD.
• Design and execute disaster recovery and failover testing, validating RTO/RPO and data integrity.
• Validate readiness before deployments, patches, and upgrades to prevent degradation.
• Collaborate with DevSecOps, SRE, and development teams on deployment strategies like blue/green, canary, and rolling deployments.
• Mentor junior engineers on test design and automation best practices.

Skills

Test automation

CI/CD

Automation design

Mentoring

Agile/SAFe

Cloud testing

Kubernetes testing

Security testing

Education

Bachelor's Degree / Associate's Degree

Tools

Selenium

JUnit

TestNG

Cypress

JMeter

Gatling

Locust

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Nexus

Kubernetes

EKS

SAST/DAST/SCA tools

Job description

Sr. Test Engineer

• Education: Bachelor's Degree / Associate's Degree
• Years of Experience: 5 years / 7 years
• Location: Telework (within the United States)
• Background Investigation: Tier 2 / Moderate Risk Background Investigation required

Description

The Sr. Test Engineer leads the design, development, and execution of automated testing strategies across a complex, mission-critical cloud platform hosted in AWS GovCloud supporting 300+ applications and 130+ monthly production releases. This role ensures all platform and application changes are validated through comprehensive automated testing within CI/CD pipelines, including unit, integration, regression, performance, and security testing, while mentoring junior test engineers and driving continuous improvement in test automation coverage and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of comprehensive automated testing strategies integrated into CI/CD pipelines across sandbox, staging, and production environments
• Develop and maintain automated unit, integration, regression, performance, and security test suites for platform services and hosted applications
• Ensure pipeline promotion processes enforce environment segregation with validated testing gates at each stage before production deployment
• Design and execute post-deployment production verification testing within two hours of each production change, documenting results and validation outcomes in associated change records
• Develop and maintain test automation frameworks that support 130+ monthly production releases across 3,000+ CI/CD pipelines
• Implement and maintain container image vulnerability scanning and Infrastructure as Code scanning within CI/CD pipelines
• Design and execute failover testing including tabletop exercises, controlled simulations, and live production drills, validating RTO, RPO, data integrity, and monitoring accuracy
• Validate system readiness prior to production deployments, patches, and upgrades ensuring all capabilities and services are not degraded or disrupted
• Design and execute disaster recovery and incident response testing exercises, documenting test results, corrective actions, and lessons learned
• Develop rollback validation procedures ensuring backout plans function correctly when executed
• Define success criteria, acceptance criteria, and production-readiness criteria for all platform changes and new capability deployments
• Collaborate with DevSecOps, SRE, and development teams to align testing requirements with deployment strategies including blue/green, canary, and rolling deployments
• Mentor and guide junior test engineers on test design, automation best practices, and platform-specific testing patterns
• Contribute to the reliability backlog by identifying recurring test failures, flaky tests, and automation improvement opportunities
• Participate in Agile and SAFe ceremonies including sprint planning, backlog refinement, demos, and retrospectives

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience leading test automation and quality engineering for complex, mission-critical cloud platforms in Federal or enterprise environments
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing automated test suites within CI/CD pipelines for containerized, Kubernetes-based applications
• Proficiency with test automation frameworks and tools (Selenium, JUnit, TestNG, Cypress, or equivalent)
• Experience with performance testing tools (JMeter, Gatling, Locust, or equivalent)
• Experience with security testing integration including SAST, DAST, SCA, and container scanning tools within CI/CD workflows
• Knowledge of Kubernetes and EKS testing considerations including pod health validation, service mesh testing, and cluster upgrade verification
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code testing and validation practices
• Familiarity with disaster recovery and failover testing methodologies including tabletop exercises and live production drills
• Experience with CI/CD pipeline tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI, or equivalent) and artifact management (Nexus or equivalent)
• Knowledge of version control systems (Git, Bitbucket, or equivalent)
• Experience working in Agile or SAFe environments with sprint-based delivery cadences
• ISTQB Advanced Test Automation Engineer or equivalent certification preferred
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer or equivalent certification preferred
• Bachelor's Degree from an accredited academic institution with a minimum of 7 years of experience in test engineering or quality assurance, with at least 3 years leading test automation for cloud-native platforms in Federal or enterprise IT environments
• OR
• Associate's Degree from an accredited academic institution with a minimum of 9 years of experience in test engineering or quality assurance, with at least 4 years leading test automation for cloud-native platforms in Federal or enterprise IT environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) experience
• Active Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card
• Experience with post-deployment verification testing for platforms supporting 200+ applications
• Experience testing failover and disaster recovery procedures in AWS GovCloud multi-region environments