Lead Software Development Engineer in Test

Are you ready to make an impact at DTCC?

Do you want to work on innovative projects, collaborate with a dynamic and supportive team, and receive investment in your professional development? At DTCC, we are at the forefront of innovation in the financial markets. We are committed to helping our employees grow and succeed. We believe that you have the skills and drive to make a real impact. We foster a thriving internal community and are committed to creating a workplace that looks like the world that we serve.

The Information Technology group delivers secure, reliable technology solutions that enable DTCC to be the trusted infrastructure of the global capital markets. The team delivers high-quality technology solutions through activities that include software development, test automation, quality engineering, platform modernization, and implementation of data, security, and regulatory standards.

Pay and Benefits:

• Competitive compensation, including base pay and annual incentive
• Comprehensive health and life insurance and well-being benefits, based on location
• Pension / Retirement benefits
• Paid Time Off and Personal/Family Care, and other leaves of absence when needed to support your physical, financial, and emotional well-being
• DTCC offers a flexible/hybrid model of 3 days onsite and 2 days remote (onsite Tuesdays, Wednesdays and a third day unique to each team or employee)

The Impact you will have in this role:

The SDET family is responsible for creating, designing, deploying, and supporting applications, programs, and software solutions. This may include new development, maintenance, automation, enhancement, and modernization of software products used internally and externally across DTCC platforms.

As a Senior Associate – Lead Software Development Engineer in Test, you will lead quality engineering practices across one or more strategic initiatives and enterprise delivery streams. In this role, you will provide technical and delivery leadership for functional, automation, integration, and regulatory testing efforts, while helping teams adopt scalable, shift-left quality engineering practices. You will be expected to drive end-to-end quality strategy, improve release confidence, strengthen traceability and governance, and lead testing across complex workflows spanning user interfaces, APIs, databases, file-based processing, regulatory reporting flows, and cross-system integrations.

The role will partner closely with Software Engineers, Product Owners, Scrum teams, delivery leads, and partner platforms to improve quality outcomes from requirements through production readiness. This includes leading test planning, influencing solution quality early in the lifecycle, improving automation and continuous testing maturity, mentoring SDETs, coordinating cross-team validation, and providing clear status, risks, and readiness reporting to stakeholders and leadership. This role also supports secure, compliant, and scalable delivery through strong focus on controls, auditability, privacy, resiliency, and operational excellence. Internal SDET role materials emphasize automation, shift-left quality, pairing/collaboration, and measurable delivery effectiveness, which are appropriate expectations for a lead-level SDET role.

Your Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead test strategy, planning, and execution across complex initiatives, ensuring business, functional, technical, and regulatory requirements are validated through effective manual and automated testing.
• Own quality engineering activities across the delivery lifecycle, including functional, integration, regression, system, exploratory, automation-assisted, and release-readiness testing.
• Drive shift-left quality practices by partnering with Software Engineers, Product Owners, and Scrum teams during refinement, story grooming, and design discussions to clarify requirements, identify ambiguities early, and improve testability before code completion.
• Define and maintain end-to-end traceability from user stories and acceptance criteria through test scenarios, test cases, automation assets, execution evidence, and defect tracking using enterprise tools such as JIRA and ALM/AQM.
• Lead validation across UI, API, database, batch, and file-based workflows, including backend verification, data reconciliation, schema validation, field mapping, transformation validation, XML/CSV processing, report verification, ACK/NACK handling, simulator-driven testing, and cross-system integration testing.
• Oversee regulatory and control-focused testing activities, including validation of transaction/reporting accuracy, timeliness, entitlements, privacy and data masking, auditability, portal access, operational controls, and downstream impacts to related systems or reporting channels.
• Drive automation strategy and continuous testing adoption by improving framework usage, integrating automated checks with CI/CD pipelines, and strengthening smoke, sanity, regression, and in-sprint automation coverage.
• Establish and monitor quality metrics, dashboards, and readiness indicators including test coverage, execution progress, defect trends, leakage, automation effectiveness, and release risk, and communicate status clearly to stakeholders and leadership.
• Lead defect triage, root-cause analysis, dependency tracking, and issue resolution across distributed teams, helping prioritize high-risk items and ensuring timely follow-through on quality concerns.
• Mentor and guide SDETs and other team members on test design, automation patterns, traceability, collaboration practices, quality standards, and domain-specific validation approaches.
• Promote strong SE–SDET collaboration, in-sprint quality ownership, and early validation practices that improve cycle time, reduce rework, and increase product quality. Internal DTCC materials explicitly describe SE–SDET pairing and DPO-style collaboration as part of the target operating approach.
• Support planning and coordination for regression cycles, environment readiness, test data strategy, deployment validation, and production support handoffs where required.
• Create and maintain high-quality documentation including test strategies, test plans, scenario coverage, readiness reports, execution evidence, defect summaries, and leadership updates.
• Identify opportunities to improve testing effectiveness through AI-enabled productivity, test optimization, and quality engineering innovation, while following enterprise standards and controls. Team goal materials explicitly call out AI-driven test optimization, policy compliance, and predictive quality/risk practices.
• Align risk and control processes into day-to-day responsibilities to monitor and mitigate risk, escalate issues appropriately, and support secure, compliant software delivery.

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 6+ years of related experience in software testing, quality engineering, or test automation, with strong experience leading testing efforts for complex enterprise applications
• Bachelor’s degree preferred or equivalent experience
• Proven experience leading end-to-end test planning and execution in Agile delivery environments
• Strong experience in functional testing, automation testing, integration testing, and defect lifecycle management
• Hands-on experience with test design techniques such as equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision table testing, pairwise testing, and exploratory testing
• Experience working with JIRA and ALM/AQM for requirements traceability, test management, reporting, and issue tracking
• Experience with one or more programming/scripting languages such as Java or Python
• Experience with automation and API testing tools/frameworks such as Selenium, TestNG, Karate, Rest Assured, or similar
• Experience with source control and CI/CD tooling such as Git / Bitbucket and Jenkins
• Familiarity with AI Prompt Engineering, AI Agents, and productivity tooling to improve test design, coverage, and execution efficiency
• Strong experience validating file-based and data-intensive workflows involving XML, CSV, schema validation, field mappings, transformations, and database verification
• Experience in financial services, regulatory/reporting processes, onboarding flows, portal-based applications, or data-platform testing preferred
• Experience coordinating across multiple teams, managing dependencies, and communicating quality status to stakeholders and leadership preferred

Talents Needed for Success:

• Strong leadership, ownership, and accountability mindset with the ability to drive quality outcomes across teams
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with high attention to detail
• Ability to understand complex business workflows and translate requirements into effective, risk-based test coverage
• Strong collaboration skills and comfort working with Software Engineers, Product Owners, Scrum teams, delivery leads, and partner platforms
• Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present testing status, quality risks, and readiness clearly to both delivery teams and leadership
• Ability to mentor others, promote best practices, and raise the overall maturity of quality engineering within the team
• Curiosity and continuous improvement mindset with a strong quality-first orientation
• Ability to balance hands-on testing responsibilities with leadership, coordination, and automation strategy
• Comfort working in fast-paced, iterative delivery environments with changing priorities and multiple concurrent dependencies
• Awareness of privacy, security, risk, resiliency, and regulatory expectations in enterprise software delivery
• Willingness to learn domain-specific concepts across regulatory reporting, operational workflows, and complex UI/API/data integration models
• Ability to create visibility, strengthen cross-team coordination, and provide structured leadership updates on progress, risks, dependencies, and decisions needed—an expectation reflected in internal SDET team goals and delivery-practice materials.

 Actual salary is determined based on the role, location, individual experience, skills, and other considerations. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

Salary Range: Salary will be Commensurate with Experience