SDET Application Architect

At Ascensus, technology is more than just a solution. It powers the business that helps millions of people save for what matters—retirement, education, and healthcare.  Our technology experts tackle exciting challenges in collaborative teams, but work in an environment where individual and career development is always valued.  Technology associates leverage their talents and passion, building new and innovative platforms, creating programs founded in automation in agile frameworks, and driving existing and new markets—all of which supports the rapid growth of a dynamic industry leader.

We are establishing a new Software Development Engineer in Test(SDET) Leadership practice within Retirement IT, and we're seeking a hands-on SDET Application Architect who will help lead our SDET practices and also serve as the Product Owner for a future Automation/SDET dedicated scrum team, and will coordinate test automation activities for SDETs assigned to business focused scrum teams. The SDET Application Architect role is positioned between the Program Architect and the Principal Software Engineer and is responsible for providing technical direction and oversight across all of our scrum teams. This individual will work closely with the Program Architect to understand business needs and identifies technical solutions. Collaborates with other Program Architects and Application architects to promote innovation, reusability, stability, scalability, and consistency across programs. Provides technical direction for scrum teams for specific initiatives and assists with initial proof of concepts and template builds. Provides ongoing technical oversight and mentoring across scrum teams to ensure they are progressing in accordance with established architecture direction. Some participation as an individual contributor to assist scrum teams with complex tasks and POC's. Researches new technologies and tools to remain abreast of current and emerging technologies, and to introduce new opportunities for innovation. Passionate about quality and continuous delivery. 

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of test automation, performance engineering, and quality visibility across our Retirement product landscape. You’ll lead a team of SDETs, define standards, and ensure automation is scalable, maintainable, and measurable across Retirement IT.

Job Functions, Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide holistic automation leadership for Retirement IT and develop visibility into automation across all scrum teams
• Sets technical direction and provides proactive oversight to scrum teams to ensure solutions are secure, scalable, efficient, and stable
• Collaborates with other Application Architects and Program Architects to identify, socialize, and confirm the best possible solutions
• Takes ownership and provides technical leadership when production issues arise requiring software engineering expertise
• Holds a high degree of responsibility for application architecture and technical execution within the SDET program
• Leads, coaches, and mentor's technical staff. 
• Help to lead performance management, succession planning, and skills development across the SDET community within Retirement. 
• Provide significant assistance in the onboarding of new SDET's
• Participates in project discussions to remove technical impediments, and assists in establishing estimates
• Performs design and development for complex tasks as an active contributor to the project pipeline
• Ensure automation solutions are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with CI/CD pipelines.
• Support disaster recovery (DR) testing and other critical quality initiatives.
• As Product Owner of the Automation/SDET Scrum Team:
  • Provide Roadmap and execution of the SDET Scrum Team through creation and maintenance of the Product Backlog.
  • Build Backlog of automation for this team with visibility and measurement of testing in mind for all scrum teams. This may be through the use of Dashboards 
  • Establishes standards, proof of concepts, and templates to enable teams to rapidly produce high quality software
  • Assists with the elaboration of Epics, Themes and Features into user stories that are granular enough to be achieved in a single sprint.
  • Participates in the daily Scrums, Sprint Planning Meetings, Release Planning, Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives
  • Maintains relationships with the other Product Owners to understand if work can be added to their backlog or within the other Scrum Teams
  • Ensure a measure of ~65% CAP development is maintained on the Scrum team
  • Primary point person internally and externally for the team for updates and feedback
  • Relies on extensive experience and sound judgment to prioritize personal workload and engagement with teams
  • Establishes strong alignment with Product Owners to understand, influence, and deliver on road maps
• Responsible for protecting, securing, and proper handling of all confidential data held by Ascensus to ensure against unauthorized access, improper transmission, and/or unapproved disclosure of information that could result in harm to Ascensus or our clients.
• Assist with other tasks and projects as assigned
• Our I-Client service philosophy and our Core Values of People Matter, Quality First and Integrity Always® should be visible in your actions on a day-to-day basis showing your support of our organizational culture.

Supervision  

• Leadership, mentoring, and coaching
• No HR responsibilities        

Experience, Skills, Knowledge Requirements

• Minimum 12 years of Software Engineering experience with a minimum of 6 years in a leadership role.  
• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies and acting as a Product Owner or similar leadership role.
• Passion for leadership, mentoring, and coaching to help others succeed
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills with ability to explain and influence architectural direction
• Excels in a results focused organization
• Experience with Agile/Scrum, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and related tools
• Expertise with server configuration, pipeline automation, and software engineering practices
• Possesses an innovative and change-oriented personality that balances well with practical need and delivery
• Experience with multiple database platforms: MS SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, and others
• Expert in .NET framework
• Expert in ASP.NET and MVC and/or Java and Struts
• Strong knowledge of JavaScript, jQuery, and JS frameworks
• Understanding of SOA and distributed computing
• Experience with Test Driven Development (TDD) practices with an automated testing framework
• Experience with performance/load testing tools (e.g., JMeter, LoadRunner).
• Experience with APM tools (e.g., Dynatrace, New Relic, AppDynamics) for monitoring and diagnosing performance issues
• Experience with Cloud Development, Mobile Apps & Messaging solutions
• Strong trouble shooting skills   

Nice to Have Skills

• Experience with Container technology
• Experience with networking, load balancing, clustering

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer

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