Hybrid Director, Software Engineering – Software Development Test (SDET)

at OCC

• Job title: Director, Software Engineering – Software Development Test (SDET)
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: $159,500 - $262,200 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Azure, Cloud, Docker, Java, Jenkins, JMeter, Kafka, Kubernetes, Microservices, Python, SDLC, Selenium, Splunk
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Chicago, United States

About the role

• Technology leader defining and driving enterprise-wide test automation and quality engineering practices. Architecting automation solutions and establishing governance for best practices in a collaborative environment in the options clearing sector.

Responsibilities

• Technology leader responsible for defining, driving and scaling enterprise-wide test automation, quality engineering practices.
• Architect and implement advanced automation solutions across applications, data and platforms.
• Enable adoption of best practices, and establish the governance, metrics and tools.
• Drive adoption of automation in all phases of testing including automated regression and smoke tests to improve quality and accelerate testing.
• Implement automated quality gates, pre/post deployment checks and shift-left testing.
• Architect scalable, reusable automation frameworks covering UI, API, microservices, data pipelines, Kafka/event driven systems, batch jobs, reports and databases.
• Define standards for BDD, contract testing, CI/CD integration, synthetic data generation and environment-agnostic test automation.
• Establish tagging and traceability across automation framework, Jira, Confluence, Test management tools, CI/CD pipelines and Splunk.
• Introduce and scale synthetic test data management, environment/service virtualization for complex integration testing.
• Envision and implement AI/ML and Generative AI infused solutions for test case generation, test data generation, automation script generation and quality insights.
• Build quality engineering and automation center of excellence to drive training, reusable asset libraries and knowledge management artifacts.
• Partner with development, product, DevOps and Platform Engineering leaders to embed automation into all stages of SDLC.
• Define, monitor and report KPIs/OKRs for automation outcomes to executives and product owners.
• Drive compliance with industry standards, regulatory requirements, and audit readiness across automation and QE practices.

Requirements

• Minimum ten (15) years’ of IT experience with ten (10)+ years in test automation.
• Proven track record of leading enterprise-scale automation initiatives in complex, distributed environments (microservices, cloud, batch applications, data, MQ, Kafka event driven systems).
• Hands-on experience with service virtualization, synthetic test data management.
• Strong hands-on expertise in testing and test automation tools and frameworks including Jira, BDD, Selenium, Cucumber, REST-assured, JMeter, Playwright.
• Strong programming experience in Java and Python.
• Deep understanding of DevOps, CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Harness, GitHub), cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and containerized environments (Kubernetes, Docker).
• Experience with Kafka/event-driven testing, large data set validations
• Experience with Agile development processes for enterprise software solutions
• Strong background in metrics-driven quality reporting and risk-based decision making.
• Strong organizational leadership skills
• Ability to manage multiple, competing priorities and make decisions quickly
• Knowledgeable about industry trends, best practices, and change management
• Strong communication skills with the ability to communicate and interact with a variety of internal/external customers, coworkers, and Executive Management
• Strong work ethic, hands-on, detail oriented with a customer service mentality
• Team player, self-driven, motivated, and able to work under pressure
• Results-oriented and demonstrated record of developing initiatives that impact productivity

Benefits

• A hybrid work environment, up to 2 days per week of remote work
• Tuition Reimbursement to support your continued education
• Student Loan Repayment Assistance
• Technology Stipend allowing you to use the device of your choice to connect to our network while working remotely
• Generous PTO and Parental leave
• 401k Employer Match
• Competitive health benefits including medical, dental and vision