Senior Quality Assurance Automation Engineer

Acuity Consultants; Wes-Kaap; On-site; ZAR 1,080,000 - 1,320,000; Full time

Job summary

Acuity Consultants seeks a Senior Automation Engineer in Cape Town to lead automation strategy across multiple payment platforms. You will design scalable UI/API automation with Playwright, integrate tests into CI/CD, and raise quality standards across teams.

You will drive AI-assisted testing, regression optimisation, and contract testing while mentoring engineers in a fintech environment handling high-volume transactions.

Qualifications

• 7+ years' experience in Automation Engineering, Quality Engineering, or Test Automation (must).
• Strong experience building automation frameworks from scratch.
• Hands-on Playwright experience (UI & API).
• Strong programming skills in C#, Java, or Python.
• Experience integrating automation into CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience testing APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Exposure to fintech, payments, banking, or other high-volume transactional systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the automation capability across multiple products and payment platforms.
• Design scalable UI and API automation frameworks using Playwright.
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish engineering practices to improve release confidence and quality.
• Mentor engineers and define quality engineering standards.
• Drive AI-assisted testing and intelligent regression optimisation.

Skills

Playwright

Automation frameworks

CI/CD pipelines

C#

Java

Python

Tools

Playwright

Job description

This is an excellent opportunity for a Senior Automation Test Engineer to become the technical lead responsible for defining automation architecture and quality engineering standards across one of South Africa's leading payments fintechs.

You'll own the automation strategy across multiple products, designing scalable frameworks, driving AI-assisted testing, and improving the reliability of payment systems processing millions of transactions.

Based in Cape Town, paying up to R1.2M per annum.

THE COMPANY

This organisation is a leading South African fintech enabling businesses and consumers to move money faster, more reliably, and at scale. Its platform supports a broad range of payment use cases, helping merchants collect, send, and manage payments seamlessly.

Processing millions of transactions, the business plays a critical role in South Africa's digital payments ecosystem, where reliability, speed, and trust are essential.

THE ROLE

As the Senior Automation Engineer, you will own the organisation's automation capability across multiple products and payment platforms.

You will design scalable UI and API automation frameworks using Playwright, integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines, and establish engineering practices that improve release confidence and software quality. Working closely with Engineering, Product, and DevOps teams, you'll embed automation throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

You'll also drive AI-assisted testing, intelligent regression optimisation, contract testing, automation observability, and integration testing across distributed systems. In addition, you'll shape automation strategy, mentor engineers, and establish quality engineering standards across the technology team.

This is an opportunity to define automation within one of South Africa's leading fintech businesses while working on complex, high-volume payment systems.

THE REQUIREMENTS

7+ years' experience in Automation Engineering, Quality Engineering, or Test Automation

Strong experience building automation frameworks from scratch

Hands-on Playwright experience (UI & API)

Strong programming skills in C#, Java, or Python

Experience integrating automation into CI/CD pipelines

Experience testing APIs, microservices, and distributed systems

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)

Exposure to fintech, payments, banking, or other high-volume transactional systems