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: $158,600 - $263,700 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

• Director of Software Engineering defining test automation solutions at Options Clearing Corporation, enhancing quality engineering practices and driving AI capabilities integration.

Responsibilities

• Technology leader responsible for defining, driving and scaling enterprise-wide test automation, quality engineering practices.
• This role will architect and implement advanced automation solutions across applications, data and platforms, enable adoption of best practices, and establish the governance, metrics and tools.
• The role combines technical expertise with strong leadership and stakeholder collaboration skills skills to deliver next generation automation infusing AI capabilities.
• Define and execute the enterprise automation strategy aligned with business and technology modernization goals.
• 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.
• Manages a team of people managers, individual contributors, and consultants/contractors.

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