Our client, a global OEM of mining equipment and mining operational technology, is looking for a high-performing Software Test Automation Engineer to join its Brisbane-based product development team.
You’ll work on a sophisticated mining OT platform used to manage and optimise large-scale mining operations around the world. The technology integrates autonomous mobile mining equipment, fleet management, high-precision positioning, machine health, safety, material and production tracking, and advanced command-and-control capabilities.
The platform processes vast volumes of real-time data from mining equipment, onboard sensors, positioning technologies and control systems to improve safety, productivity and the management of increasingly connected and autonomous mining operations.
The product is undergoing a major next-generation redevelopment, including a move to a Microservices architecture using Java 21 and Angular 19.2. The new generation will incorporate AI, sophisticated GIS and geospatial capabilities, drones, advanced automation and autonomous mining technologies. AI is also being integrated into the software development lifecycle to assist with code generation and the creation of automated test scripts, helping engineering teams accelerate development and improve software quality.
You’ll be part of a significant global product development effort, working alongside product and engineering teams in Australia, the USA, Canada and India to help deliver the next generation of mining technology.
What you'll do: - Design, build, and maintain automated tests across API, business-flow, and end-to-end UI layers for modernised MineStar microservices.
- Author contract and operation tests against REST and Protobuf endpoints, covering happy paths, negative and boundary cases, error handling, response schema validation, and event (MQTT) side-effects.
- Build business-flow API tests that stitch operations across services to prove the system behaves correctly, including parity checks that compare modernised and legacy behaviour.
- Automate end-to-end user journeys through the AngularUI WebApp using Playwright, with API-first test setup and role-based access control (RBAC) permutations.
- Contribute to and evolve the Playwright and TypeScript automation framework, including the shared locator library, extendable Page Object Model, reusable fixtures, and parallel execution.
- Configure and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) so automated tests run on every pull request, monitoring daily execution, triaging failures, and driving down flakiness to root cause.
- Write outcome-based, maintainable tests that survive surface changes, rather than step-coupled scripts tied to a single UI.
- Support test environment readiness and test data management for automation on the containerised (Kubernetes) platform.
- Partner with engineers through shift-left practices, three-amigos conversations, and code reviews to build quality in early.
- Hand finished per-domain automated suites to embedded scrum-team QAs, mentoring them to own and extend the suites and actively removing single points of failure through documentation.
- Communicate quality status, automation coverage, and risk clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
You should have: - 5+ years' hands-on experience in test automation engineering, writing automated tests that run in CI.
with: - Proficiency in TypeScript, or strong JavaScript with a credible TypeScript ramp, and the ability to build and maintain test automation code (strong typed-language depth in Java, C#, or Python with type hints also considered).
- Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and maintaining automated test suites that provide fast, reliable feedback in CI.
- Hands-on experience testing REST APIs and contracts, including positive and negative scenarios, error handling, response content and schema validation, and authorisation / role-based access control (RBAC).
- Experience with Playwright for UI automation (Cypress or Selenium acceptable with a Playwright onboarding plan), applying maintainable patterns such as Page Object Model and component-based design.
- Outcome-based test design, able to articulate the difference between an outcome-based test case and a step-coupled one, and to write tests that survive surface changes.
- CI/CD ownership, having configured and troubleshot a pipeline (GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, or Jenkins), not just consumed one.
- Strong troubleshooting skills to triage defects and automation failures to root cause, improving stability and reducing flaky tests across environments and data sets.
- Git fluency, with branching, pull requests, and code review as a default engineering practice.
- Strong test analysis and design capability, including risk-based and exploratory testing, and translating requirements into clear, maintainable automated scenarios.
- Strong understanding of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and Agile delivery, embedding quality early through shift-left testing, definition of done, and quality gates.
- Experience with Cucumber or BDD frameworks where BDD is used as a collaboration practice (three-amigos), not Gherkin syntax layered over automation.
- Excellent communication skills, able to clearly articulate quality status, coverage, and risk to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Collaborative approach, partnering with engineers and product roles to continuously improve quality practices and outcomes.
It would be highly desirable if you have: - Protobuf or gRPC experience, used as the schema source of truth for modernised services.
- MQTT or event-driven testing, validating event side-effects published via the message broker.
- Kubernetes or containerised platform testing, including reading logs across pod restarts and reasoning about mTLS, certificate, and RBAC failures.
- Java reading literacy to support parity test design against the legacy MineStar codebase (writing Java not required).
- Mining, industrial automation, or other safety-critical domain background.
- Performance and load testing experience (e.g. k6, JMeter, or Gatling), including designing scenarios, establishing baselines, and interpreting latency and throughput results.
- Ability to integrate performance checks into CI and flag regressions against agreed thresholds, complementing functional automation.
What's on offer: - Initial 12-month contract with strong extension potential
- Long-term program of work backed by significant product investment
- Build the next generation of globally deployed mining technology
- Work on modern cloud-native microservices rather than legacy-only applications
- Join an exceptionally talented engineering organisation
- Competitive market rates
- Make a tangible contribution to technology used by many of the world's mining companies
The role is based int he Brisbane CBD and requires attendance in the office five (5) days a week.
Australian or New Zealand citizens and Australian Permanent Residents will be highly regarded.
Candidates currently living within Greater Brisbane are strongly preferred due to the office-based nature of the role.
Questions regarding this role can be directed to:
Fortunato (Forty) Galluzzo
0438 709 417
[email protected]or
Katrina Penfold
0408 737 527
[email protected]