Your Role in Supporting Our Members:As an
QE Lead, Payments, you will play a senior technical role responsible for ensuring the quality, reliability, and performance of member-facing platforms through hands-on engineering leadership and execution of automation-first practices across the SDLC. This position focuses on designing and implementing quality engineering solutions, leveraging deep technical expertise in automation, API-first testing, AI-driven/agentic techniques, and non-functional validation. This is not a traditional QA Lead role. We are looking for a senior engineer (senior SDET) to lead a team of quality engineers in a dotted line capacity building scalable, code-driven quality solutions, not just manage testing activities.
This is a
Full-time, Permanent role based at
Vancity head office. Our head office is based in Vancouver, but we are open to candidates in
BC and Ontario. While this position provides a hybrid work arrangement, you will be expected to be on-site for events and business demands when needed.
How You'll Make an Impact:Payments & Real-Time Payments for Quality Engineering- Leading end-to-end quality engineering for Canadian payment capabilities, including Interac e-Transfer, payment hub integrations, account-to-account payments, and future Real-Time Rail (RTR) initiatives, ensuring quality, reliability, and compliance across the complete payment lifecycle
- Translating Interac operating rules, certification requirements, Payments Canada obligations, and RTR readiness requirements into traceable test scenarios, automated quality controls, release evidence, and production readiness criteria
- Defining and executing Test strategies covering payment initiation, authorization, routing, ISO 20022 message types and validation, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, returns, reversals, disputes, exception handling, and payment finality to ensure accurate and resilient transaction processing
- Partnering with Fraud, Security, Risk, Compliance, Operations, and Engineering teams to validate fraud controls, authentication and authorization mechanisms, transaction monitoring, auditability, operational controls, and regulatory compliance requirements
- Building scalable automated validations for payment APIs, event-driven systems, and real-time transaction processing, idempotency, duplicate payments, retries, timeout handling, resiliency, and 24x7 operational readiness
- Supporting payment certification, participant testing, production readiness assessments, and release governance activities by coordinating test evidence, defects, dependencies, operational validation, and quality sign-off across internal and external stakeholders
Quality Strategy & Planning- Translating quality engineering strategy and technical direction into executable plans and approaches aligned to business and delivery needs
- Collaborating directly with product and engineering partner teams to embed quality objectives within those teams' delivery contexts
- Implementing scalable, data-driven automated validation approaches that reduce reliance on manual and UI-heavy testing
- Contributing to metrics and quality signals (e.g. automation coverage, test reliability metrics, CI/CD feedback loops) through instrumentation and KPIs
- Implementing and enforcing quality gates (API coverage, performance thresholds, reliability criteria) within Dev-owned CI/CD pipelines
Technical Leadership- Providing technical leadership as a senior individual contributor to the Quality Engineering team, operating as a "first among equals" within SDET community
- Influencing, guiding and coaching Test Engineers through hands-on collaboration in various areas including coding, automation design / engineering, data analysis, etc.
- Bringing teams together and drive alignment in ambiguous situations through technical credibility and sound business judgement, not formal authority
- Identifying risks and guide teams through technical problem-solving, risk-based testing and execution leadership
Automation & Tools- Building and evolving scalable automation frameworks across API, service, and UI layers-with API-first as core principle
- Implementing modern API testing approaches such as contract testing, service virtualization, and data-driven validation
- Driving the transition from Selenium-heavy UI automation to a layered testing approach (API integration minimal UI)
- Understanding of AI-assisted and agentic testing approaches to improve coverage, speed, and maintainability of our test automation
Quality Advocacy- Partnering with developers to improve testability, observability, and API-first approach
- Collaborating with DevOps and releasing engineering to support reliable, automated deployments
- Leading root cause analysis for production issues and implementing preventative engineering solutions
- Being the Dev teams' quality advocate, promoting shift-left quality practices over manual and UI-driven downstream approaches
Hands-On Engineering- Implementing automated validation across API, service, and system layers and systems that prevent defect leakage through early validation and automation
- Partnering and executing performance, security, and regression validation through automated frameworks integrated into pipelines
What You'll Bring to the Team:- 10+ years of experience in software engineering, quality engineering, or related field and Payment's quality assurance
- Strong experience in Canadian payments ecosystems and payment processing concepts supporting payment certifications, compliance testing, or production readiness programs
- Experience operating as a Senior Technical Contributor or SDET
- Strong programming skills (Python, JavaScript, C#, Java) with proven experience building and evolving automation frameworks
- Experience integrating test automation into CI/CD pipelines, NFR validation
- Experience with scalable API automation frameworks (REST, event-driven systems)
- Hands-on experience with tools like Playwright, Cypress, Postman, or equivalent
- Experience with AI-powered testing or test generation: LLMs, agentic and spec-driven automation
- Experience with distributed systems and microservices architectures
- Familiarity with AWS or Azure, containers (Docker/Kubernetes)
- Data-driven approach to measuring and improving quality
- Ability to evaluate quality effectiveness by analyzing automation outcomes and leveraging data to identify patterns and signals
You'll Thrive Here If You Are:- Engineering-minded - Treating testing as a software engineering discipline.
- Collaborative - Influencing teams and building alignment without formal authority.
- Analytical - Solving complex technical problems in ambiguous environments.
- Innovative - Exploring AI-driven automation and modern engineering practices.
We value lived experience, so if you are interested in this role, we encourage you to apply even if you feel your skills don't perfectly align with those listed.
What You'll Earn:This role offers a salary range of
$113,000 to $153,000 per annum. The base pay offered may vary depending on factors such as relevant qualifications, skills, previous experience, and internal equity. As part of our total rewards package, employees may also be eligible for our annual incentive program, subject to program eligibility requirements.
Why You'll Love Working Here:A career at Vancity is more than just a job, you're joining a tradition of change-makers who are creating lasting change for our communities. Beyond base pay, we offer a comprehensive total rewards package to ensure our employees are empowered to thrive:
- Living Wage Employer: We're the largest private-sector Living Wage Employer in Canada and consistently ranked among Canada's Top Employers
- Customizable Benefits: Permanent employees receive flexible benefit packages that can be tailored annually to meet evolving needs
- Generous Vacation: New employees start with 3-4 weeks of vacation per year, with additional days earned over time
- Extra Stat Holidays: In addition to BC's 11 statutory holidays, we offer 2 extra days, plus care days for personal or family illness
- Immediate Health Coverage: Health and dental benefits begin on your hire date, with three levels of coverage to choose from
- Defined Benefit Pension: Our retirement plan provides a guaranteed income for life, recognizing that retirement looks different for everyone
