Automation Test Engineer

Improvix Technologies•Washington, DC

1d•$140,000 - $150,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Improvix Technologies is hiring an Automation Tester for an active federal program in Washington, DC. This role focuses on building and maintaining Automation Framework tools and scripts for regression testing, integrating them into the CI pipeline, and validating database entries, not just UI rendering. The position offers hands-on testing work with real ownership, where the individual will be responsible for writing scripts, analyzing failures, distinguishing between defects and environmental issues, and confidently determining build readiness for release. Automation is a funded priority in this role, not an afterthought. The tester will own the entire framework, including its design (Page Object Model, data-driven, BDD structure), CI/CD integration, and maintenance. The role requires an active Secret clearance, which is considered a valuable and transferable skill. The work environment is hybrid, with a fixed schedule of three days onsite in Foggy Bottom, Washington, DC, and two days remote. There are opportunities for career advancement, with QA leads and senior automation engineers on the program.

Requirements

4+ years of software testing experience, including 2+ years writing and maintaining automated tests using open source frameworks like Playwright, Cupress, Selenium etc.
Hands-on automation experience with Playwright, Cypress or similar JS tools.
Experience building or extending a test automation framework — Page Object Model, data-driven, or BDD with Cucumber and Gherkin or similar tools.
Working knowledge of CI tooling: GitLab or similar tools and running suites as part of an automated build.
Experience across the full STLC — test planning, design, execution, defect tracking, and reporting — in an Agile/Scrum environment.
Defect management in Jira, with the writing skills to make a defect report unambiguous.
Clear communication with developers, business analysts, and government stakeholders.
U.S. citizenship and an active Secret clearance.
Ability to work onsite in Washington, DC (Foggy Bottom) three days per week.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting federal customers or working in a cleared environment.
API testing with REST or SOAP services (Postman, RestAssured, or similar).
Experience with SQL Scripting to create and test backend database.
Performance or load testing with JMeter.
Test management experience in ALM, Azure DevOps, or TFS.
Automation in a second language or toolset — C#, Typescripts, Python
Experience contributing to a CMMI-appraised process or a formal QA standards effort.
ISTQB certification, or comparable formal QA training.
Accessibility (Section 508) testing exposure.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain automated test scripts using Automation frameworks like Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Junit, NUnit etc.
Extend and maintain the automation framework — Page Object Model, data-driven, modular, and BDD structure using Cucumber and Gherkin.
Integrate automated suites into the CI/CD pipeline with Gitlab or similar CI/CD tools, so regression runs on every build, not on request.
Triage failures: separate real defects from environment issues and brittle locators, and fix the scripts that are lying to you.
Execute cross-browser and cross-platform runs and keep coverage current as the application changes.
Review user stories, acceptance criteria, and business rules to build test scenarios and cases with clear traceability to requirements.
Execute functional, smoke, integration, system, and regression testing across sprint and release cycles.
Support User Acceptance Testing — preparing scripts, walking business users through them, and capturing what comes back.
Log defects in Jira with reproduction steps precise enough that a developer can act on them without a follow-up meeting.
Drive the defect lifecycle — triage, prioritization, retest, and closure verification.
Validate critical functionality ahead of production releases and report test status, coverage, and risk to the team.
Work onsite at Foggy Bottom three days a week for sprint ceremonies, stakeholder sessions, and network-restricted testing.