Test Engineer \SDET(for our partner group)

AI-first, no manual QA. We're AI-first across the board, and in testing especially: fully automated coverage at every level — unit, integration, E2E. No manual QA. Tests are written and maintained with AI agents; you build the frameworks and processes so both humans and agents can cover new functionality fast and reliably.
Research & high pace. We move fast, and quality has to hold up at a high development pace. We expect proactivity: independently research and evaluate tools and approaches on the market (test frameworks, contract testing, fault injection, AI tooling for tests), and bring in and adopt what genuinely raises quality without slowing the team down.
Important: we need a strong engineer who owns the outcome and raises the quality bar for the whole team. The engineering team is top-tier, and the bar is high. We're not looking for average.

What you'll do
Testing infrastructure: design and build the automated test foundation from scratch at every level (unit, integration, E2E) — test data, environments, fixtures
Own product quality: track coverage, correctness, and regressions across the whole platform, and raise the standards for the team
Production release gate: build the quality-check pipeline for shipping to production — quality gates, smoke/regression suites, go/no-go criteria, post-deploy verification
Payment flow E2E: end-to-end tests for the full cycle (auth → capture → settlement → payout), including edge cases and failure scenarios
Integration / contract tests with vendors: payment gateway, card processor, KYC/KYB, SEPA/SWIFT — mocks, contract testing, webhook simulation
Backend tests: JUnit + Testcontainers against real PostgreSQL/infrastructure, testing transactions and idempotency
Frontend / E2E: Playwright for the merchant portal and ops panel, visual and integration scenarios
Financial correctness: verify the ledger (double-entry), MDR/netting/payouts, and multi-layer reconciliation — the numbers must add up
Quality gates in CI: tests as mandatory gates in GitHub Actions, fighting flaky tests, speeding up runs, verification gates before merge
Tooling research: continuously research the market (frameworks, contract testing, fault/chaos, perf, AI tooling) and adopt what keeps quality high at a fast pace
Load & reliability: baseline perf/load testing of critical paths
AI-driven testing: generating and maintaining tests with AI agents, tooling and processes for AI-first coverage

Stack
Backend tests: Kotlin, JUnit 5, Testcontainers, Spring Boot Test
Frontend / E2E: Playwright, TypeScript
Database: PostgreSQL
CI/CD: GitHub Actions
Containers: Docker, Kubernetes
AI: AI-first — active use of AI tools and agents to write and maintain tests

Requirements

Must have:
5+ years in test automation / SDET (or a strong backend/fullstack engineer with a testing focus)
Confident coding — Kotlin/Java and/or TypeScript (tests as code, not GUI scripts)
Automated tests at every level — unit, integration, E2E; understanding of the test pyramid/honeycomb
E2E frameworks (Playwright or equivalent)
Integration/contract testing, mocking external services, webhook testing
Building quality gates and release pipelines in CI/CD
PostgreSQL — data, migrations, consistency checks
Research & tooling ownership — independently evaluate the market, pick and adopt tools that keep quality high at a fast development pace
AI-fluency — active integration of AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) into daily work. Not just "aware of AI" — uses it to multiply productivity, with a critical eye for generated output
Proactivity — spots coverage gaps and risks before release, proposes solutions, drives them to done. Doesn't wait to be told what to test
English: confident reading and listening is a must. Good spoken English is a strong plus

Nice to have:
Fintech / payments — testing payment flows, settlement, reconciliation
Understanding of double-entry accounting and reconciliations
Contract testing (Pact or equivalent)
Performance/load testing (k6, Gatling)
Chaos/fault injection, reliability testing
BPMN processes (Camunda) — testing business processes via API
Security/compliance scenarios (sanctions screening, AML)