Staff Software Developer in Test (SDET)

PandaDoc is seeking a Staff Software Developer in Test (SDET) to join our Platform Track and lead the automation strategy across our engineering organization.

At PandaDoc, engineering teams are divided into product teams, which focus on delivering new features, and the Platform Track, which provides the foundation that enables these teams to work efficiently. The Platform Track is responsible for managing infrastructure, automating workflows, and optimizing development environments to improve the developer experience, increase productivity, and ensure faster, higher-quality product delivery across the organization

About the Role:

As a Staff SDET, you will define and execute company-wide test automation strategies to ensure scalability, reliability, and quality across all products. You will play a critical role in influencing system design, mentoring engineers, and driving initiatives that improve the efficiency of our development lifecycle. This is a high-impact role, working closely with leadership to ensure that our engineering practices set the standard for quality.

In this role, you will:

• Architect and implement scalable, reliable, and efficient test automation strategies to support complex distributed system
• Collaborate with engineering and product leadership to design systems with built-in testability and quality
• Drive the adoption of best practices for automated testing, including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing
• Evaluate, implement, and manage advanced test automation tools and frameworks to optimize testing workflows
• Optimize and enhance CI/CD pipelines to ensure seamless integration of automated testing at every stage of development
• Define, track, and analyze key quality metrics (e.g., test coverage, flakiness, execution time) to drive continuous improvement and informed decision-making.
• Mentor and guide other SDETs and software engineers, fostering a culture of quality, experimentation, and innovation.
• Advocate for and implement modern development and testing practices such as TDD, BDD, shift-left testing methodologies, etc.
• Collaborate with product and platform teams to implement monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions

Our stack:

• Service-oriented architecture, including legacy code and monolithic services (Django-based)
• Main stacks: Python (AsyncIO, Django) and Java (Spring Boot, Java 11, Gradle)
• Extensive use of AWS and Kubernetes for provisioning and deploying workloads
• Cross-service communication: NATS (migrating to gRPC), Kafka, Debezium for event-driven operations, RabbitMQ for Celery, and Temporal.io
• Monitoring and tracing: Grafana stack for monitoring, alerting, and distributed tracing (LGTM)
• Testing frameworks: PyTest, Selenium, Playwright, Appium

About You:

• Experience: 5+ years in software development, including 3+ years in test automation for complex systems.
• Technical Skills: Strong in Python (preferred) or Java, with expertise in frameworks like PyTest, Selenium, and Playwright for UI, API, and E2E testing.
• Automation Solutions: Proven ability to design scalable, reliable test automation systems.
• CI/CD & Cloud: Skilled in optimizing pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI) with AWS and DevOps practices.
• Monitoring: Familiarity with tools like Prometheus and Grafana for tracking test/system performance.
• Quality Metrics: Experience improving test coverage, reducing flakiness, and enhancing execution times.
• Experimentation: Open to exploring new tools and methods for faster, better results.
• Leadership: Skilled at mentoring and driving cross-team adoption of QA best practices.
• Communication: Strong communication skills in the English language for collaborating with diverse teams.
• Nice to have: Familiarity with AI/ML in test automation.

Why Join Us?

• Work at the forefront of automation and quality in a dynamic, innovative environment
• Make a significant impact by driving quality improvements across an organization
• Collaborate with talented engineers to build cutting-edge solutions

We'd love to hear from you if you’re excited about making a difference and driving automation at scale!
Apply now to join our team and help us deliver exceptional products faster.

#hiring #Automation #DevEx #Platform