Lead Software Development Test Engineer

About Tekion:

Positively disrupting an industry that has not seen any innovation in over 50 years, Tekion has challenged the paradigm with the first and fastest cloud-native automotive platform that includes the revolutionary Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC) for retailers, Automotive Enterprise Cloud (AEC) for manufacturers and other large automotive enterprises and Automotive Partner Cloud (APC) for technology and industry partners. Tekion connects the entire spectrum of the automotive retail ecosystem through one seamless platform. The transformative platform uses cutting-edge technology, big data, machine learning, and AI to seamlessly bring together OEMs, retailers/dealers and consumers. With its highly configurable integration and greater customer engagement capabilities, Tekion is enabling the best automotive retail experiences ever. Tekion employs close to 3,000 people across North America, Asia and Europe.

Job Introduction

The Lead Software Development Test Engineer provides technical leadership for quality engineering initiatives across complex product areas, driving test strategy, automation maturity, and release quality at scale. This role partners closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps, and program stakeholders to embed quality throughout the software development lifecycle and ensure Tekion’s products meet high standards for reliability, performance, and customer experience. The Lead Software Development Test Engineer is expected to influence testing practices across teams, guide engineers on quality strategy, and serve as a key escalation point for complex quality risks and release decisions.

Key Role & Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end quality strategy for large product domains, cross-functional initiatives, and high-impact releases

• Design, review, and optimize test approaches for functional, regression, integration, system, end-to-end, API, and data validation testing

• Drive the development, scalability, and maintainability of automated test frameworks and reusable test assets

• Partner with Engineering and Product teams early in the development lifecycle to identify quality risks, clarify requirements, and improve testability

• Establish quality gates, release readiness criteria, and risk-based testing strategies to improve delivery confidence

• Oversee validation of complex workflows across web, mobile, backend services, APIs, and platform components as applicable

• Analyze defect trends, escape patterns, and test effectiveness metrics to identify systemic quality issues and recommend improvements

• Support root cause analysis for critical defects and production issues, partnering with cross-functional teams on corrective and preventive actions

• Guide test environment strategy, test data management, and integration of automated tests into CI/CD pipelines

• Mentor senior and junior test engineers, providing technical direction on test design, automation patterns, debugging, and quality best practices

• Influence engineering teams to adopt scalable quality engineering standards, tools, and processes

• Contribute to roadmap planning and estimation discussions by highlighting testing scope, dependencies, and quality risks

• Act as a trusted advisor and escalation point for complex release and quality decisions

• Job Complexity: Leads highly complex quality engineering work spanning multiple systems, teams, or product domains. Requires balancing hands-on technical contributions with strategic quality leadership, cross-team alignment, and proactive risk management. Impacts release quality, engineering efficiency, and customer experience across broad areas of the platform.

• Required Supervision: Operates with a high degree of independence and technical judgment. Receives direction primarily on business priorities, organizational goals, and major initiatives, while independently leading quality strategy, execution planning, and cross-functional coordination for assigned domains.

• Expertise: Recognized as a senior technical leader in software quality engineering, test automation, and release risk management. Demonstrates deep expertise in building scalable test strategies, improving automation effectiveness, and influencing engineering organizations toward quality-by-design practices. Brings strong systems thinking, technical depth, and leadership capability to complex quality challenges.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field

• 7+ years of experience in software testing, quality assurance, or software development, including substantial experience leading complex test initiatives and automation efforts

• Deep expertise in software development lifecycle (SDLC), software testing lifecycle (STLC), Agile methodologies, and modern quality engineering practices

• Strong experience designing scalable test strategies across complex systems, integrations, and distributed architectures

• Advanced experience with automation tools and frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Appium, REST Assured, or similar

• Proficiency in one or more programming or scripting languages such as Java, Python, JavaScript, or similar

• Strong experience with API, database, integration, and end-to-end testing

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, build tools, and test execution in automated delivery environments

• Experience with defect tracking, test management, and quality reporting tools such as Jira, TestRail, Azure DevOps, or similar

• Strong analytical, communication, collaboration, and mentoring skills

• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and quality practices across teams in a fast-paced environment

Perks & Benefits 

• Opportunity to work with some of the smartest minds to solve complex challenges at scale. 

• Impactful role in shaping and securing a global, cloud-native & AI driven platform. 

• Innovative, collaborative, and fast-paced culture. 

Current Tekion Employees: Please apply via the Internal Job Board in Ashby

Note: Tekion recently transitioned to a new recruiting tool and we appreciate your patience and feedback as we adjust to our new system!

Tekion is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, victim of violence or having a family member who is a victim of violence, the intersectionality of two or more protected categories, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

For more information on our privacy practices, please refer to our Applicant Privacy Notice here .