• Location: Ottawa, Ontario
• Type: Direct Hire
• Job #35729

Senior QA Engineer III – Automation | Banking | API | Kafka | ETL

Opportunity

We are seeking a Senior QA Engineer III with strong hands-on test automation and banking/financial services experience to support complex enterprise applications and integration environments.

This is a senior, hands-on quality engineering role focused on automation framework development, API and backend testing, Kafka/event-driven testing, ETL and data pipeline validation, database testing, and end-to-end integration testing.

The successful candidate will be comfortable building automation frameworks from scratch, troubleshooting complex integration and data issues, contributing to overall QA strategy, and providing technical guidance to other QA professionals.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and enhance scalable automation frameworks from scratch.
• Develop and execute automated test suites for APIs, backend services, Kafka, ETL/data pipelines, databases, and file-based integrations.
• Lead end-to-end functional, integration, regression, and system testing across complex banking applications.
• Automate API workflows, backend validations, and data-processing scenarios using Java or Python.
• Develop API automation using Rest Assured, Postman Collections, or equivalent frameworks.
• Perform API performance and load testing using JMeter or similar tools.
• Validate Kafka producer/consumer message flows, event processing, message integrity, and downstream integrations.
• Design automated tests for ETL jobs, data transformations, pipelines, and reconciliation processes.
• Perform advanced SQL and database validation to confirm data accuracy, completeness, and transactional integrity.
• Test data movement across APIs, microservices, messaging platforms, databases, ETL processes, and file-based interfaces.
• Investigate complex defects, integration failures, automation issues, and data discrepancies.
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD and continuous testing pipelines.
• Collaborate with Developers, Business Analysts, Product, DevOps, and QA teams throughout the software delivery lifecycle.
• Contribute to test strategy, automation architecture, quality standards, test planning, and risk identification.
• Prepare and maintain test plans, test cases, automation strategies, execution reports, defect documentation, and traceability matrices.
• Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, estimation, and retrospectives.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior and intermediate QA engineers.
• Drive continuous improvement across automation coverage, testing efficiency, frameworks, tools, and QA practices.

What You Bring

Must Have

• 5+ years of progressive QA/software testing experience, including substantial hands-on automation experience.
• Strong experience within banking, financial services, fintech, or complex transaction-based environments.
• Proven experience designing and building test automation frameworks from scratch.
• Strong automation development experience using Java or Python.
• Hands-on experience with API and backend automation, including Rest Assured, Postman, or equivalent tools/frameworks.
• Strong experience with API functional, integration, response validation, performance, and load testing.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka, including producer/consumer flows, message validation, and event-driven integration testing.
• Experience with ETL testing, data pipeline validation, transformation testing, and data reconciliation.
• Strong SQL and database testing experience with Oracle, PostgreSQL, or similar relational databases.
• Experience with JMeter or equivalent performance-testing tools.
• Experience testing complex end-to-end integrations across APIs, messaging, databases, ETL pipelines, and file-based interfaces.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git, automated test execution, and reporting tools.
• Strong understanding of Agile/Scrum delivery.
• Strong debugging, troubleshooting, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to independently own complex QA and automation initiatives.
• Experience providing technical guidance, peer reviews, knowledge sharing, or mentorship.

Nice to Have

• Experience with batch processing systems and enterprise job schedulers.
• PostgreSQL validation and performance-testing experience.
• Experience testing microservices and event-driven architectures.
• Exposure to Microsoft Azure and cloud-based enterprise environments.
• Understanding of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) / Kubernetes environments.
• Experience with Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or similar CI/CD platforms.
• Experience supporting high-volume banking transactions, integrations, and data-processing platforms.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of progressive QA / software testing experience with significant automation responsibility.
• Demonstrated ability to operate at a Senior QA Engineer / QA Engineer III level, independently owning complex testing and automation deliverables.

What Will Make You Successful

You are a hands-on senior QA automation engineer who can go beyond executing existing test scripts. You can design frameworks, understand complex backend integrations, trace data across multiple systems, identify quality risks early, and troubleshoot issues across APIs, Kafka, ETL pipelines, databases, and microservices.

You are equally comfortable writing automation, analyzing data with SQL, collaborating with engineering teams, and mentoring other QA professionals.