Principal QA Engineer

Principal QA Engineer

Department: Quality Assurance

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Melville, NY

Compensation: $160,000 / year

Description

The Opportunity

We are seeking a hands-on Principal QA Engineer to drive the evolution of quality engineering across our platform. In this role, you will define and scale our automation strategy, partnering with Product, Engineering, and DevOps to build fast, reliable, and CI/CD-native testing solutions with a strong focus on Playwright and API-first automation.

You will act as a technical leader across multiple teams, creating reusable frameworks and shared tooling, modernizing legacy approaches, and mentoring engineers to increase automation adoption and release confidence. You will use metrics, observability, and AI-accelerated solutions to identify inefficiencies, reduce regression time, and enable faster, higher-quality delivery. The ideal candidate is a strong coder and automation architect who thrives on solving systemic quality challenges and elevating how teams build, test, and ship software. Success in this role is measured by improved automation efficiency, faster pipeline feedback, and the ability for teams to independently deliver high-quality releases.

Mission of the Role

This role operates as a horizontal quality leader across multiple product and platform teams, driving test automation strategy, improving execution efficiency, and enabling scalable, modern quality engineering practices using Playwright, API automation, AI-accelerated workflows and more.

The Company

We are a small team with a big vision: to be the premier provider of cloud technology solutions for retailers. KWI offers a complete, unified commerce solution from a single database, specifically designed to help specialty retailers grow their business. Our portfolio of customers includes Pandora, Bluemercury, Tom Ford and many other globally recognizable brands.

We combine Point of Sale, Merchandising, Order Management, eCommerce, CRM, and Loss Prevention into one cloud-based platform. We are a Values and Mission driven organization, and we believe that if we develop and demonstrate leadership in our strategy, operations, and people, we will continue to drive product innovation and service excellence.

As a Principal QA Engineer, you:

• Lead the automation and quality engineering vision across teams, establishing scalable standards and modern frameworks (Playwright, API-first testing).
• Act as a hands-on technical coach and enabler, improving automation adoption, stability, and execution speed.
• Transform legacy and slow regression models into fast, CI/CD-native, data-driven pipelines.
• Use metrics, observability, and risk-based strategies to drive release confidence.
• Introduce AI-accelerated testing approaches to increase engineering productivity.
• Own quality outcomes end-to-end, from architecture and testability to production validation.

The impact you'll make

• Mentor a team of Automation Engineers, collaborating closely with Products and developers to automate test cases and scenarios effectively.
• Apply coding and programming languages effectively to testing activities, demonstrating a strong understanding of their application.
• Monitor industry-standard metrics and account-specific metrics to adapt internal QA standards accordingly.
• Ensure the delivery of high-quality releases with minimal defects.
• Collaborate with the Technical Lead and developers to define and comprehend test requirements.
• Provide accurate estimates, including risk assessment, for effective planning and commitments.
• Manage and assess the testing workload while effectively communicating resource requirements to meet targets.

What you will bring

• Proficient in an object-oriented language, preferably Java or C#.
• Strong hands-on experience in Web and Mobile Automation using tools such as Selenium, Appium, Maven, and TestNG.
• Architect and lead the end-to-end QA strategy for a multi-tenant SaaS retail platform, designing scalable, reusable test case frameworks across POS integrations, payments, inventory, APIs, and cloud-based microservices-ensuring full regression, performance, and automation coverage aligned to rapid release cycles and high-availability standards.
• Knowledge of unit testing, regression testing, integration testing, and compatibility testing.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum development processes.
• Proficient in using defect-tracking tools like Jira and Test Management Tools like TestRail.
• Solid understanding of MySQL and proficient in debugging
• Strong experience in mentoring QA engineers.
• Deep hands-on experience with Playwright and TypeScript/JavaScript
• Strong experience in API automation and microservices validation using tools like Jmeter, Postman etc.
• Proven success building or modernizing automation frameworks at scale
• Experience integrating automation into CI/CD pipelines for fast feedback
• Experience implementing AI-assisted testing workflows
• Experience driving automation adoption across multiple teams
• Experience reducing regression execution time through intelligent test strategies
• Performance testing integration into quality strategy

As a member of the KWI team you will receive

• Full Medical, Dental and Vision
• Annual bonus eligible
• Free gym in the building
• Generous PTO policy
• Summer Fridays....all year round
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Discount from building café
• 401(K) with a 50% company match (up to 6% of employee contribution)
• Employee Referral Program
• (1) Volunteer day each year

Our work space

We understand that our teams need flexibility, which is why we follow a hybrid schedule. Our in-office days of Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and employees are allowed to work remotely on Wednesdays and Friday.

We are also a collaborative group and believe that getting together in person allows our team to do their best work. Together we enjoy monthly events, bagels every Thursday, a state-of-the-art coffee machine, a full snack pantry and many more surprise and delight moments throughout the year.

Our commitment to you

At KWI, we know that cultivating diversity and fostering an inclusive work environment is critical to our impact and success. We create an environment where no individual is advantaged or disadvantaged because of their background. We offer equal opportunity employment regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability status, age, marital status, or protected veteran status.

With a commitment to maintaining a bias-free environment in which harassment is prohibited, we respect cultural diversity and comply with the laws of the places in which we operate. We expect our business partners, suppliers, clients, and all our team members to uphold these commitments.