Lead Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Overview

Lead the SDET function for Skillz's mobile eSports platform, driving engineering-led quality through scalable test automation, CI/CD integration, performance testing and defect prevention.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks for UI, API, integration, and backend testing.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, improve pipeline efficiency, and establish effective release gates.
• Improve test environment reliability through better environment management, test data practices, and flaky test reduction.
• Lead performance testing, including load, stress, and scalability testing; identify bottlenecks and work with engineering teams on solutions.
• Debug complex failures across distributed systems and services, lead root cause analysis, and help prevent recurring issues.
• Use AI coding assistants and LLM-based tools, such as Claude, Cursor, or Copilot, to improve test design, expand coverage, generate tests, analyze failures, and accelerate debugging.
• Apply AI- and ML-assisted techniques to log analysis, failure clustering, test optimization, and defect pattern detection.
• Partner with DevOps and SRE teams to improve observability, deployment stability, and service reliability.
• Mentor SDET and QA engineers, guide technical execution, and promote strong testing practices across teams.
• Apply testing fundamentals across functional, regression, system, and end-to-end testing.

What you'll need

• 10 years of experience in software quality engineering, with at least 3+ years in a technical leadership role.
• Strong hands-on experience in building scalable test automation frameworks for UI (Appium), API, and backend systems.
• Deep experience working with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.), including test integration, pipeline optimization, and release gating.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure components impacting quality (cloud environments, containers, microservices, service dependencies, and test environments).
• Proven experience ensuring environment stability, including test environment reliability, test data management, and flaky test reduction.
• Strong background in performance testing and engineering (load, stress, scalability testing, and performance bottleneck analysis).
• Experience collaborating with DevOps/SRE teams to improve system reliability, deployment stability, and observability.
• Hands-on experience leveraging AI tools such as Claude, Cursor, Copilot, and LLM-based systems to improve test design, automate test creation, analyze failures, and accelerate debugging workflows.
• Experience applying AI-driven approaches for log analysis, failure clustering, test optimization, and defect pattern detection.

Details

• Location: Bengaluru (Bangalore) office, India.
• Work mode: ability to work from the Bangalore office 4 days per week.