QA Architect

Role overview

QA Architect at NeST Digital

– Quality Engineering Architect (QA Architect)

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise Quality Engineering roadmap and define testing standards, frameworks, governance models, and engineering best practices.
• Lead scheme conformance and regulatory compliance testing for Banking Payments and Banking Applications - based integrations.
• Design and build API-first and contract-first automation frameworks using tools such as Karate, Pact, Specmatic, WireMock, Rest Assured, or equivalent.
• Drive workflow-level testing for orchestration platforms (Temporal, Camunda, Conductor, or equivalent), covering replay validation, determinism, compensation, and idempotency.
• Establish testing strategies for event-driven, asynchronous, and distributed payment workflows.
• Design and maintain container-based integration testing environments using Testcontainers or equivalent technologies.
• Define test data management strategies for regulated environments, including synthetic data generation, masking, and privacy-safe provisioning.
• Implement release evidence automation and end-to-end traceability (Requirements → Test Cases → Executions → Defects) to support audit readiness and regulatory compliance.
• Define security testing practices and integrate DevSecOps quality controls within CI/CD pipelines.
• Define performance, scalability, resilience, and reliability testing strategies for production-scale payment systems.
• Integrate automated quality gates into CI/CD pipelines and establish release readiness criteria.
• Drive AI-assisted Quality Engineering by leveraging intelligent test generation, regression optimization, self-healing automation, flaky test detection, and change-impact-based test selection.
• Evaluate emerging Quality Engineering technologies and continuously improve engineering practices across the organization.
• Mentor Quality Engineers and provide technical leadership across automation, API testing, workflow validation, compliance testing, and engineering excellence.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Architecture, DevOps, Security, and Business teams to embed quality throughout the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)..
• Must-Have Skills Quality Engineering & Architecture 10–15 years of experience in Quality Engineering, Test Architecture, or QA Automation with demonstrated ownership of enterprise Quality Engineering strategy.
• Experience designing scalable automation frameworks and reusable Quality Engineering platforms.
• Experience implementing end-to-end traceability and producing audit-ready release evidence.
• Strong understanding of quality governance, risk-based testing, defect prevention, and release quality management.
• Automation & Testing Strong expertise in API testing, API automation, and contract testing, with hands-on experience in tools such as Karate, Pact, Specmatic, WireMock, Rest Assured, or equivalent.
• Experience with Playwright or equivalent modern automation frameworks.
• Strong understanding of microservices, distributed systems, and event-driven/asynchronous architectures, including experience testing workflow orchestration platforms (Temporal, Camunda, Conductor, or equivalent) for replay, determinism, compensation, and idempotency.
• Experience with Testcontainers or equivalent container-based integration testing approaches.
• Experience defining and executing performance, scalability, resilience, and load testing using JMeter, Gatling, or equivalent tools.
• Experience with security testing methodologies, DevSecOps practices, and strong SQL/database validation skills..
• Banking & Payments Strong experience in Banking Payments, payment processing platforms, or transaction processing systems.
• Exposure to message standards and scheme conformance testing is strongly preferred.
• Good understanding of transaction lifecycle, reconciliation, settlement, and regulatory compliance testing.
• DevOps & Engineering Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab, or equivalent platforms.
• Working knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, containerized applications, and cloud-native testing.
• Experience managing test data in regulated environments using synthetic data generation, masking, and secure provisioning.
• Candidates must actively contribute to automation framework development and demonstrate coding proficiency during the technical assessment.
• Experience working in Agile, DevOps, and regulated software delivery environments.
• AI-enabled Quality Engineering Experience leveraging AI-assisted testing tools to improve software quality and engineering productivity.
• Experience with intelligent test generation, regression optimization, self-healing automation, flaky-test detection, change-impact analysis, and AI-assisted test maintenance.
• Leadership Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Proven ability to mentor, coach, and build high-performing Quality Engineering teams.
• Experience driving engineering excellence across multiple products, platforms, and delivery teams.
• Good-to-Have Skills Accessibility testing.
• Service virtualization and advanced contract testing practices.
• Mobile automation testing.
• ISTQB Advanced Test Architect (or equivalent) certification.
• ISO 20022 Location Preference: Kochi, Trivandrum or Bangalore

Required qualifications

• 10–15 Years Role Summary The Quality Engineering Architect will define and drive the enterprise Quality Engineering strategy across banking and payment platforms.
• This role is responsible for designing scalable test architectures, automation frameworks, API and contract testing standards, workflow-level validation, performance and security testing practices, AI-enabled Quality Engineering capabilities, and CI/CD quality gates to ensure high-quality, resilient, compliant, and scalable software delivery.
• With a strong focus on regulated Banking and Financial Services environments, the role emphasizes scheme conformance, Payment Messages, Payment rails , audit-ready compliance evidence, and engineering excellence.
• This is a hands-on technical leadership role.
• The architect is expected to actively contribute to automation framework development, write production-quality code, mentor engineering teams, and drive enterprise-wide Quality Engineering transformation — not operate solely in a governance capacity.

Required skills

• Quality Engineering Architecture, API & Contract Testing, Banking Payments , Automation Framework Development, Performance & Resilience Testing, Security Testing, AI-assisted Test Automation, Test Strategy, Software Quality Management, Technical Leadership

Preferred qualifications and skills

• Strong hands-on programming experience in C#/.NET (preferred) or Java using xUnit/NUnit, JUnit, or equivalent testing frameworks.

Employment details

• Location: Kochi Ntp [Kerala] [India]