Lead – Automation QA Lead

About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.  

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the world’s most successful individuals, families, and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Role Overview:

The Automation QA Lead – Infra & Application Resiliency is responsible for overseeing the execution, planning, and continuous improvement of automated testing and stability validation across infrastructure and application environments. This role ensures production resiliency through robust automation coverage, quality oversight of infrastructure change testing, and proactive issue resolution. The lead will collaborate closely with global stakeholders, including engineering and service delivery teams, to drive automation initiatives aligned with ITIL processes, maintain SLA compliance, and ensure seamless cross-regional delivery. The ideal candidate brings deep technical expertise, strong leadership, and a strategic mindset to enhance system health, testing efficiency, and operational reliability.

Key Responsibilities:

Automation & Stability Oversight

· Lead the execution and monitoring of automated production stability scripts to ensure consistent system performance.

· Drive automation strategies that enhance application resiliency and reduce manual intervention.

· Oversee stability validations and automated testing for infrastructure changes, ensuring minimal impact to production systems.

Stakeholder Engagement & Requirements Gathering

· Translate stakeholder needs into actionable automation deliverables and testing plans.

· Conduct regular connects with application Service Delivery Managers’ and engineering leadership to share status updates, accomplishments, and roadmap progress.

· Influence strategic decisions through data-driven insights and quality metrics

· Maintain ongoing communication with stakeholders to track progress, gather feedback, and refine automation initiatives.

Quality & Change Management

· Ensure quality oversight for infrastructure change testing, aligning with ITIL processes and change management protocols.

· Validate and approve automation assets before deployment to non-prod and production environments.

· Incidents Analysis and identify proactively identify coverage

· Lead root cause analysis and Collaborate with engineering and operations teams to identify improvement opportunities and enhance testing coverage

Team Leadership & Delivery Management

· Drive closure of issues and risks related to automation script resiliency, maintaining accountability and transparency.

· Demonstrates expertise in reviewing automation code quality and ensuring comprehensive requirement gathering to drive optimal test design and coverage.

· Lead a cross-functional team to manage and deliver automation stability solutions within defined SLAs.

· Coordinate and plan automated testing efforts to validate application change deployments, ensuring they do not adversely impact application health or system resiliency.

· Exposure to DR testing initiatives

· Lead automation projects and activities within planned schedule, including aggressive timely follow up on risks, issues and escalations.

· Partner with India-based leads to ensure seamless handoffs, issue resolution, and continuous delivery across time zones.

· Conduct requirement-gathering sessions to identify areas where automation can improve efficiency, reliability, and scalability and conduct handover to India partner teams with outcomes to ensure proper fulfillment of USA Stakeholder requirements

· Provisioning & De-provisioning: Ensure all test accounts are properly created, rotated, and decommissioned following the standard procedures and to mitigate security risks

· Ownership & Auditability: Maintain clear documentation of identity ownership, purpose, and access patterns. All credentials must be securely stored in vaults and subject to compliance reporting

· Periodic Reviews: Conduct annual access certifications for all users. Failure to complete certifications results in access disablement and escalation

Planning & Testing Metrics Analytics for continuous improvements

· Ensure planning targets and delivery milestones are met consistently.

· Monitor and report on automation performance metrics, stability trends, and SLA adherence.

Qualifications:

· Minimum Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology or a related field, or equivalent experience required.

· At least 3 years of experience in infrastructure change testing and quality leadership.

· Proven experience in leading automation teams and managing production stability initiatives.

· Strong understanding of ITIL processes and infrastructure change management.

· Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

· Experience working with global teams, especially in USA-India collaboration models.

· Proactive independent decision maker using technical skills

· Ability to handle Change Advisory Board meetings and make decisions

Technical Skills

· Languages: Java, Python, VBScript

· Tools: Selenium, UFT, LeanFT, RestAssured, TestNG, Cucumber, Appium.

· Platforms: Web, WebServices (REST/SOAP), Windows, WPF, Mainframe.

· Frameworks: POM, BDD, custom automation suites.

· CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins.

· Database Testing: MSSQL, Oracle, DB2, AS400, Snowflake, Cosmos DB

· Should be able to demonstrate experience in designing automation frameworks, solutions for large scale projects

· Should have experience in designing unattended automation test suites.

· Should have experience in creating custom automation solutions and improve test automation efficiency.

· Should have experience in designing solutions which simplify complex problems, reusability.

· Should have worked on the Architect role and on varied POCs/ POVs and provide solutioning to automation and DevOps issues

· Strong hands on experience DevOps implementation (Jenkins / ADO / Bamboo)

· Worked on building automation frameworks according to problem in hand using suitable design patterns.

· Well experienced in code review which will improve resiliency of automation scripts

· Experience working on multiple operating systems (i.e. Windows, Linux, Unix)

· Good understanding on application monitoring tools like DynaTrace

· Familiarity of Agile Methodology Scrum/Kanban and project management tools like Azure and Jira

· Knowledge on Service Now and Change management process

Preferred Skills:

· Expertise in scripting languages (e.g., Python, Shell, PowerShell).

· Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automation frameworks.

· Experience with monitoring tools and incident management platforms.

· Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.

Salary Range:

Salary range is a good faith estimate of base pay. Northern Trust provides a comprehensive benefits package including retirement benefits (401k and pension), health and welfare benefits (medical, dental, vision, spending accounts and disability), paid time off, parental and caregiver leave, life & accident insurance, and other voluntary and well-being benefits. Northern Trust also provides a discretionary bonus program that may include an equity component.

Working with Us: 

As a Northern Trust partner, greater achievements await. You will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability is an asset that emboldens us to explore new ideas.

Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to assisting the communities we serve! Join a workplace with a greater purpose.

We’d love to learn more about how your interests and experience could be a fit with one of the world’s most admired and sustainable companies! Build your career with us and apply today. #MadeForGreater 

Reasonable accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at [email protected].

 
We hope you’re excited about the role and the opportunity to work with us. We value an inclusive workplace and understand flexibility means different things to different people.

Apply today and talk to us about your flexible working requirements and together we can achieve greater.