Description

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

Senior Manager, Quality Engineering - API & Data Platforms

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, Quality Engineering - API & Data Platforms is a strategic and hands-on quality engineering leader responsible for driving automation excellence, data validation strategies, and enterprise-quality practices across complex integration ecosystems. This role combines deep technical expertise in API, data, and event-driven testing with strong leadership capabilities to build scalable quality engineering solutions that support critical business initiatives.

As part of the Data Initiatives Program for the Integration Hub, this leader will oversee the design and implementation of modern automation frameworks, lead a high-performing team of quality engineers, and champion continuous quality improvements across distributed systems, APIs, databases, and streaming platforms. The ideal candidate brings strong technical depth, leadership maturity, and a passion for innovation in automation, observability, and AI-assisted testing.

Key Responsibilities

Quality Engineering Leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of automation and quality engineers focused on API, integration, and data validation testing.

• Establish and drive enterprise-wide quality engineering standards, automation strategies, and best practices.

• Foster a culture of quality ownership, continuous improvement, innovation, and engineering excellence.

• Partner with Engineering, Product, Architecture, DevOps, and Business stakeholders to align quality initiatives with organizational goals and delivery timelines.

• Provide technical leadership in test strategy, framework design, automation architecture, and quality governance.

Automation Strategy & Framework Development

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable, reusable, and resilient automation frameworks for APIs, integrations, and data-driven applications.

• Drive an automation-first testing approach across functional, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing.

• Define and enforce coding standards, automation best practices, and CI/CD quality gates.

• Evaluate and introduce modern testing tools, frameworks, and AI-assisted automation solutions to improve efficiency and coverage.

• Ensure automated test suites are optimized for reliability, maintainability, scalability, and execution performance.

API, Integration & Data Validation

• Lead quality assurance efforts for complex enterprise integrations involving multiple upstream and downstream systems.

• Validate data integrity, transformation logic, reconciliation, and consistency across systems such as EASY, Person & Household, Account platforms, and other enterprise applications.

• Perform backend and integration testing across relational and NoSQL databases including PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and DynamoDB.

• Validate event-driven workflows and streaming architectures using Kafka, including message validation, event sequencing, downstream processing, and error handling.

• Develop robust validation mechanisms for high-volume and complex data pipelines.

DevOps & Continuous Testing

• Collaborate with DevOps and platform engineering teams to integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.

• Drive shift-left and continuous testing practices within Agile and DevSecOps environments.

• Improve test execution efficiency, reporting, monitoring, and quality metrics visibility.

• Support release readiness activities, risk assessments, and production validation strategies.

Innovation & Performance Engineering

• Champion innovation initiatives including AI/ML-assisted testing, intelligent automation, and advanced quality engineering practices.

• Support performance, scalability, and reliability testing initiatives using tools such as Gatling, JMeter, or LoadRunner.

• Contribute to observability and quality monitoring strategies in cloud-native environments.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Software Testing, or Test Automation, including 3+ years in technical leadership or management roles.

• Strong hands-on experience in automation engineering with deep expertise in Java and core programming concepts.

• Ability to understand, review, and contribute to production-grade integration and automation code.

• Extensive experience with automation frameworks and tools such as:

• Karate

• Cucumber

• JUnit

• TestNG

• REST Assured or similar API testing frameworks

• Strong experience testing API-centric, integration-heavy, and data-intensive enterprise applications.

• Experience working in AWS cloud environments and cloud-native architectures.

• Hands-on experience with Kafka and event-driven microservices architectures.

• Proven expertise in validating complex data flows across distributed systems and databases.

• Experience with CI/CD tools and automation execution pipelines such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar platforms.

• Strong understanding of Agile, Scrum, and DevOps methodologies.

• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and leading high-performing QA/Quality Engineering teams.

• Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical field.

• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and containerized testing environments.

• Experience with performance and load testing tools such as Gatling, JMeter, or LoadRunner.

• Exposure to observability, monitoring, and logging platforms.

• Experience implementing AI-assisted testing solutions and modern quality engineering practices.

• Knowledge of enterprise integration patterns and distributed system architectures.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinker with strong execution capabilities.

• Passion for engineering excellence and continuous improvement.

• Ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive organizational quality maturity.

• Strong coaching, mentoring, and team development skills.

• Ability to balance hands-on technical contributions with leadership responsibilities.

• Results-driven mindset with strong ownership and accountability.

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.