Test Automation Engineer (SDET)

Role: Test Automation Engineer (SDET)

Location: Charlotte NC / Dallas TX / McLean VA (100% Onsite)

Experience Required: 5 - 8 years of relevant software test engineering / test automation experience

About the Role

Every repave, every onboarding wave, every COTS/MOTS migration in the Evergreen Platforms roadmap depends on one thing: knowing an application still works after we touch its infrastructure. As a Test Automation Engineer (SDET), you will build and own the automated testing rubric and E2E/resilience/performance validation suites that gate container and VM lifecycle changes across the entire application portfolio.

This role sits inside the same Evergreen Platforms workstream as the Container & VM Software Engineers, but the craft is different: you are building the safety net that lets repave-on-a-cadence be a confident, automated decision rather than a manual leap of faith.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the App Automated Testing Rubric used to certify applications before and after container/VM repave.
• Test framework breadth: design E2E test automation suites using Selenium, Playwright, Appium, Cypress, and Karate across pilot and firm-wide application onboarding waves.
• Build resilience and performance testing harnesses that validate repaved containers/VMs prior to production cutover.
• Extend test automation to ephemeral environments, enabling on-demand validation without persistent test infrastructure.
• Build leaderboard and scoring features that track and surface onboarding test-pass rates across application teams.
• Partner with Container & VM Software Engineers to gate COTS/MOTS repave and Category-1/2/3 onboarding waves on automated test rubric pass rates.
• Integrate test results into CI/CD pipelines and operational dashboards to give application teams real-time onboarding visibility.
• Contribute test coverage that validates drift-detection remediation — confirming that fixing drift doesn''t reintroduce functional defects.

Must-Have Qualifications

• Hands-on test automation experience with at least two of: Selenium, Playwright, Appium, Cypress, Karate.
• Experience building E2E test suites for containerized and/or VM-based applications.
• Experience with resilience, performance, or load testing tooling.
• Scripting/programming ability in Python, Java, or JavaScript for test framework development.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.

Good-to-Have / Preferred Qualifications

• Experience testing in ephemeral or on-demand environments.
• Familiarity with OpenShift/Kubernetes or VM-based application architectures.
• Experience building test dashboards, scorecards, or gamified adoption/quality metrics.
• Exposure to drift detection or configuration-compliance testing.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• 5-8 years of software test engineering experience, including at least 2-3 years building automated E2E test suites at production scale.
• ISTQB or equivalent test automation certification is a plus but not required.

What Success Looks Like

• A growing majority of onboarded applications are certified through the automated testing rubric rather than manual sign-off.
• Post-repave production defects trend toward zero as automated coverage expands.
• E2E test suite coverage reaches all Category-1, Category-2, and Category-3 applications on the roadmap.
• Onboarding cycle time drops measurably as automated gating replaces manual test cycles.