Software Engineer Sr - Backend Quality Engineer/Automation

PNC is a finance and insurance company that emphasizes the importance of its people in delivering the best customer experience. The Senior Software Engineer - Backend Quality Engineer / Automation will focus on building and scaling automated testing capabilities to ensure robust, scalable solutions for critical payment services.

Responsibilities:

• Hands-on ownership of automation frameworks and suites for one or more services/products
• Drives automation coverage and reliability improvements; owns triage workflows and reduces flakiness and runtime
• Partners with engineers to ensure stories are testable and quality gates are met before promotion
• Design, build, and maintain automated test frameworks and suites for APIs and services; expand coverage while keeping tests deterministic and fast
• Create reusable automation patterns (data builders, helpers, stubs/mocks where appropriate) to reduce duplication and improve maintainability
• Own regression automation health: flake reduction, runtime optimization (parallelization where appropriate), and clear failure triage signals
• Define and implement a layered test strategy (unit, component/service, integration, end-to-end) aligned to change risk and payment criticality
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD and define/enforce quality gates for merge and promotion readiness (evidence-based Definition of Done)
• Drive defect prevention: analyze defect leakage trends, run retrospectives on escapes, and implement systemic fixes (test gaps, unclear requirements, missing validations)
• Partner with Engineers, Architects, and Business Systems Analyst/Product Owners early to clarify acceptance criteria, edge cases, and testability; translate behavior into executable checks where appropriate
• Provide quality feedback during design and product review cycles; promote testability, observability, and safe change patterns
• Support release readiness by validating test evidence and coordinating with change/release processes as needed
• Contribute to performance and resiliency validation approaches where appropriate (test data, scenarios, and automation hooks)
• Ensure monitoring and diagnostic artifacts exist for failures (logs/metrics/traces) and that test failures are actionable

Requirements:

• Strong experience in test automation engineering (building and maintaining automation frameworks and suites)
• Experience designing layered test strategies and integrating automated tests into CI/CD with meaningful quality gates
• Comfort partnering with developers on testability, defect prevention, and release readiness; evidence-based communication style
• Experience testing APIs/services and validating data flows; working familiarity with SQL and data validation concepts is a plus
• Experience in regulated or high-integrity domains (payments, banking, money movement) with strong focus on correctness and auditability
• Experience with BDD-style executable specifications and/or API automation tools commonly used in enterprise environments (tool-agnostic)
• Experience with performance testing concepts and test data management practices
• Hands-on ownership of automation frameworks and suites for one or more services/products
• Drives automation coverage and reliability improvements; owns triage workflows and reduces flakiness and runtime
• Partners with engineers to ensure stories are testable and quality gates are met before promotion
• Design, build, and maintain automated test frameworks and suites for APIs and services; expand coverage while keeping tests deterministic and fast
• Create reusable automation patterns (data builders, helpers, stubs/mocks where appropriate) to reduce duplication and improve maintainability
• Own regression automation health: flake reduction, runtime optimization (parallelization where appropriate), and clear failure triage signals
• Define and implement a layered test strategy (unit, component/service, integration, end-to-end) aligned to change risk and payment criticality
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD and define/enforce quality gates for merge and promotion readiness (evidence-based Definition of Done)
• Drive defect prevention: analyze defect leakage trends, run retrospectives on escapes, and implement systemic fixes (test gaps, unclear requirements, missing validations)
• Partner with Engineers, Architects, and Business Systems Analyst/Product Owners early to clarify acceptance criteria, edge cases, and testability; translate behavior into executable checks where appropriate
• Provide quality feedback during design and product review cycles; promote testability, observability, and safe change patterns
• Support release readiness by validating test evidence and coordinating with change/release processes as needed
• Contribute to performance and resiliency validation approaches where appropriate (test data, scenarios, and automation hooks)
• Ensure monitoring and diagnostic artifacts exist for failures (logs/metrics/traces) and that test failures are actionable
• Roles at this level typically require a university / college degree, with 3+ years of relevant / direct industry experience
• Certifications are often desired
• In lieu of a degree, a comparable combination of education, job specific certification(s), and experience (including military service) may be considered
• Bachelors
• Application Development
• Automation Engineering
• Backend Testing
• Business Management
• CI/CD
• Continuous Integration (CI) Tools
• Customer Solutions
• Design
• Group Problem Solving
• Process Improvements
• Release Management
• Software Solutions
• User Experience (UX) Design