Principal Software Quality Assurance Engineer

Advanced Solutions International Inc.•Texas, TX

3d•$100,000 - $125,000•Remote

About The Position

The Principal Software Quality Assurance Engineer (Principal SQAE) is the most senior individual contributor in the quality function and a specialist capability shared across every delivery stream. Partnering with the Quality & Security Manager, the Principal SQAE sets test and automation strategy, raises the quality standard across the portfolio, takes the named quality-owner seat on the highest-risk specifications, and drives the analysis that pushes the escaped-defect rate down quarter over quarter. The role leads through standards, architecture, and mentorship rather than through people management.

Requirements

BS/BA in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience; advanced degree a plus.
10+ years of experience in software quality assurance or quality engineering, preferably on enterprise-level applications, including at least 3 years at a principal or lead level and a track record of setting quality or automation strategy.
Mastery of modern web automation tools such as Playwright, Selenium, or Cypress, and strong scripting skills sufficient to build complex end-to-end coverage and set the framework patterns others follow.
Experience architecting or directing a shared automation framework across multiple teams or products.
Strong experience with API testing tools such as Postman or REST Assured, including contract testing paradigms, and with validating open API integrations and third-party extensions.
Advanced SQL proficiency, including debugging complex relational data pipelines and validating transactional and reporting layers, preferably on Azure SQL.
Practical, working knowledge of Microsoft Azure components such as app services and cloud monitoring, sufficient to design and target testing against the deployed platform.
Deep familiarity building and maintaining build and release pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.
Expert manual and exploratory testing judgment for the highest-risk changes.
Experience with Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, and Git.
Practical experience in an Agile environment using team-level Scrum, comfortable in a model where the dedicated Scrum Master role is retired and team facilitation sits with player/coach engineering managers.
Excellent analytical and communication skills, able to explain quality risk to engineers, product leaders, and executives.

Responsibilities

Setting test and automation strategy. Partnering with the Manager of Quality, defining the test strategy, automation architecture, coverage standards, and tooling direction that every delivery stream draws on.
Owning the hardest specifications. Taking the named quality-owner seat on the highest-risk and most complex specifications, from refinement through release.
Raising the standard across the portfolio. Establishing and evolving testing patterns, reviewing practices, and quality gates so that what one spec teaches travels to the next, and quality scales beyond headcount.
Shaping the shared automation approach with the Test Automation team. Partnering with the Test Automation team, which owns and maintains the shared automation framework and platform, to set its coverage strategy and design direction so it serves every stream. Bringing strong scripting skills to the hardest end-to-end workflows, authoring automated tests in standard UI and API tools, and helping establish the patterns the wider quality function follows.
Validating the data and integration layers. Authoring advanced SQL to validate data integrity, asynchronous transactional processing, and reporting layers, and validating open API integrations and third-party web extensions for secure and performant behavior at the boundary.
Leading escaped-defect analysis. Owning portfolio-level root-cause analysis, spotting systemic patterns across streams, and converting them into upstream prevention.
Strengthening the release-readiness decision. Bringing the deepest risk assessment to the independent release call and helping harden the regression and release-readiness gate.
Mentoring senior and junior staff. Coaching senior quality engineers and growing the craft across the function, modeling testing judgment and technical rigor.
Championing a shift-left testing culture. Partnering with product, developers, DevOps, and architecture to make quality a first concern at refinement, shaping testable acceptance criteria and preventing defects before build rather than inspecting for them after.
Performing other job-related duties and responsibilities as may be assigned from time to time.