Senior Software Quality Engineer

Protolabs•Maple Plain, MN

18h•$107,400 - $161,000•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a Senior Software Quality Engineer to support and evolve the test strategy for the Pricing domain. This role involves comprehensive testing, including functional, integration, contract, regression, and non-functional aspects like performance and reliability. You will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining automated test suites for APIs, events, integrations, and end-to-end scenarios, ensuring continuous testing within CI/CD pipelines. A key part of this role is validating pricing and ML outputs, partnering with engineers to improve testability, investigating defects, and contributing to release readiness. You will also monitor quality metrics, mentor QA engineers, and participate in on-call rotations. The role requires ensuring test approaches align with regulatory and data handling requirements for commercial pricing systems.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
7+ years of experience in software quality assurance, test automation, or SDET roles in a SaaS or production environment
Experience owning test automation and CI integration for backend or platform teams
Proven track record of leading test strategy or automation initiatives across cross functional products
Strong programming skills for test automation, especially in Python, with C# as a plus, and comfortable working directly in engineering codebases including reviews, fixes, shared libraries, and build pipelines
Solid experience with API and UI testing, along with component integration and service level integration testing
Hands on experience designing and maintaining GitHub Actions or similar CI pipelines, including parallel jobs, artefacts, secrets management, branch protections, and failure triage
Good understanding of databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL, including writing data setup and assertions, understanding migration impacts, ensuring test isolation, and writing complex SQL queries
Experience working in cloud environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, and familiarity with containerised workloads including Docker and basic Kubernetes concepts for test environments
ISTQB certification at foundation or advanced level, or equivalent formal QA training, with practical application of structured test design techniques such as equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, risk based testing, traceability, and quality modelling
Strong analytical skills when working in ambiguous domains, with the ability to translate finance, sales, and business rules into clear test cases and automation
A strong quality mindset with attention to detail, especially around pricing rules and regression in revenue impacting flows

Nice To Haves

Exposure to ML and MLOps testing, including model validation, A B or backtesting support, monitoring inference pipelines, and ensuring data quality
Experience with tools such as pytest, Playwright or similar for selective UI and API flows, Postman or Newman, contract testing frameworks, and performance tools like Locust
Familiarity with observability practices including logs, metrics, and traces for test failure diagnosis and production like verification
Experience participating in on call or incident response within a platform team
Experience with DBT or data testing frameworks

Responsibilities

Support and evolve the test strategy for the Pricing domain, covering functional, integration, contract, regression, and non-functional testing such as performance, reliability, and ML quality gating across services and APIs
Design, implement, and maintain automated test suites for APIs, events, integrations, and targeted end‑to‑end and performance scenarios aligned with the team’s architecture, including API and event‑driven components and cloud deployments
Own and extend continuous testing within GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, ensuring test execution on PRs, enforcing quality gates, reporting results, managing flaky tests, and integrating with deployment workflows.
Validate pricing and ML outputs for correctness, edge cases, and regression, including geometry‑driven estimates, probabilistic forecasts, and model‑serving behaviour where applicable
Partner with engineers to improve testability through clear acceptance criteria, observable systems, contract testing between services, and shift‑left practices during code reviews.
Investigate defects in production and pre‑production environments, perform root cause analysis, and drive preventative improvements such as closing automation gaps, increasing coverage, and enhancing processes
Contribute to release readiness by assessing risks, defining regression scope, providing go or no‑go input, and verifying system behaviour after release for pricing‑critical changes
Monitor quality metrics including coverage trends, defect escape rates, pipeline stability, and SLA‑related signals, and communicate status clearly to engineering and product leadership while automating post‑release monitoring
Mentor QA engineers and SDETs, promote testing standards, establish coding conventions for tests, and drive shared ownership of quality and testing frameworks across the engineering organisation.
Participate in on‑call or incident support rotations when needed, focusing on reproductions, adding automated regression coverage, and ensuring long‑term fixes
Ensure the test approach aligns with relevant regulatory, audit, and data handling requirements, especially in the context of commercial pricing systems