Lead Quality Engineer - (POS Modernization)

Kitestring•Des Moines, IA

65d•Onsite

About The Position

Our client is a national convenience & fuel retailer—is rebuilding their point-of-sale (POS) platform. We’re seeking a Lead Quality Engineer (Python) to own the test strategy, automation architecture, and quality outcomes for cloud-native, event-driven microservices powering store operations.

Requirements

8+ years in Quality Engineering with strong Python automation experience; 3+ years leading QEs/SDETs or quality programs.
Expertise with pytest, fixtures/parametrization, and requests/httpx; solid understanding of OOP and test design patterns.
Proven hands-on with microservices and REST/gRPC testing; contract testing (e.g., Pact) and schema evolution strategies.
Kafka/Pulsar testing experience: producers/consumers, DLQs, exactly/at-least-once semantics, and reprocessing strategies.
Cloud & containers: experience on any major cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure) with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes: deployments, resources, health checks).
CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar; test orchestration, artifacts, parallelization, and environment provisioning with IaC.
Data skills: SQL proficiency (joins, indexes, query plans) and NoSQL validation patterns; familiarity with data migration testing.
Observability: logs/metrics/traces (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, and cloud-native APM such as Datadog/New Relic/CloudWatch/Cloud Trace) to detect regressions and flakiness.
Security awareness: OAuth2/OIDC flows, secret management, and PCI touchpoints across payment paths.
Retail/POS or payments domain experience is a strong plus (EMV, tokenization, settlement, offline queues).

Nice To Haves

UI automation with Playwright (web) and/or lightweight mobile testing for store devices.
Testcontainers, WireMock/mock servers, and service virtualization.
Chaos engineering basics; blue/green, canary, and feature-flag testing.
Experience with DDD/event sourcing and data versioning strategies.

Responsibilities

Own quality end-to-end: define the test strategy across services, data streams, and UIs (API, integration, contract, performance, reliability).
Lead a small team: mentor 2–3 QEs/SDETs; shape the backlog, write test charters, break down work, and drive sprint quality gates.
Build the automation platform: implement Python-based frameworks (pytest + fixtures, Testcontainers, internal libs, CLI tools).
API & microservices testing: create robust API suites, schema validation (Avro/JSON Schema), idempotency checks, and resiliency scenarios.
Event-driven validation: test Kafka (or Pulsar) pipelines—consumer lag, DLQs, retries/backoff, compaction, retention policies.
Data quality: validate relational and NoSQL stores (SQL Server/Postgres + DynamoDB/MongoDB/Cassandra); ensure correctness, consistency, and performance.
Performance & reliability: establish SLAs/SLOs; run load/soak/chaos scenarios (e.g., Locust/k6, fault injection); analyze bottlenecks.
Edge & store scenarios: design offline-first tests, network-flap simulations, payment/EMV flows, device integrations (scanners, printers, pinpads).
Shift-left quality: integrate linting, unit/contract tests, and security checks into CI; champion quality metrics and dashboards.
Compliance & security: support PCI and privacy standards; implement data masking, secrets handling, and auditability.
Cross-functional collaboration: partner with developers, product, security, and store ops; coordinate with offshore teams to deliver at pace.