[Hiring] Senior Functional and Automated Tester @General Dynamics Information Technology

Role Description

The Senior Functional and Automated Tester plans, designs, and executes functional and automated testing for modern applications, with a focus on quality, security, performance, and operational readiness. This role works closely with product, development, DevSecOps, and stakeholders to ensure solutions meet business requirements and are released with confidence. The tester leads test strategy and automation approaches, drives defect prevention through early engagement, and helps establish consistent testing standards across teams and projects.

• Lead or contribute to project planning by identifying testing scope, risks, environment needs, test data requirements, and tooling to support delivery timelines.
• Translate business and technical requirements into test strategies, test plans, and detailed test cases, covering functional, integration, regression, performance, and security-related validation.
• Design and build automated tests (unit, API, integration, and user interface) using a disciplined approach that supports repeatable and reliable execution within a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.
• Perform hands-on functional testing of workflows, edge cases, data validations, and error handling; verify that solutions meet user and operational expectations.
• Validate event/message-based services and distributed workflows, including systems that use message queues such as Apache Kafka, ensuring correct processing, resiliency, and traceability.
• Test and validate API-centric and cloud-friendly designs (microservices, serverless applications), including backward compatibility, contract expectations, and integration with internal and external partners.
• Partner with DevSecOps and engineering teams to ensure consistent application of development standards, procedures, and processes, including secure development expectations.
• Support system compatibility and environment readiness by coordinating with technical teams on test environments, deployments, configuration changes, and release readiness.
• Apply data security procedures in testing activities; identify potential data security risks and ensure defects and risks are documented, escalated, and tracked through resolution.
• Produce and maintain clear testing documentation (test evidence, defect reports, dashboards, charts/diagrams, and runbooks as needed) suitable for leadership and audit reviews.
• Drive defect triage and root-cause analysis with developers and stakeholders; verify fixes and help implement preventative quality controls.
• Promote strong operational practices including observability validation (logging, metrics, tracing), performance baselines, and readiness checks.
• Use AI-assisted development and testing workflows (where approved) to accelerate test creation, analysis, and triage while maintaining quality and security expectations.
• Perform other job-related duties assigned to support delivery and operational goals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field from an accredited College/University.
• If the candidate does not possess a relevant four-year degree, an additional four years of relevant work experience will be required.

Requirements

• Minimum 8 years of experience in software testing, quality engineering, or software development with significant testing/automation responsibilities.
• Demonstrated experience owning test strategy and automation for complex, distributed, or cloud-based systems.
• Strong experience leading and executing functional testing and test automation across the software development lifecycle.
• Proven ability to define and implement an effective test strategy for distributed/cloud applications, including regression planning and release readiness.
• Experience with automated testing tools for unit, API, and user interface testing; familiarity with test-driven development (TDD) concepts and automation-first approaches.
• Experience working in CI/CD pipeline environments using source code management and build/deployment tooling (for example: GitLab, Jenkins) within a DevSecOps/SecDevOps culture.
• Working knowledge of secure coding and secure engineering expectations, including risk identification and validation of security controls.
• Experience validating message/event-driven systems, including Kafka-based workflows and asynchronous processing behaviors.
• Experience testing API-centric architectures such as microservices and serverless applications, including contract validation and integration testing.
• Cloud and data pipeline familiarity, including one or more of the following: Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Redis.
• Strong troubleshooting skills, including analyzing logs/metrics/traces, isolating failures across components, and supporting defect triage.
• Solid technical fluency in one or more languages used for test automation and validation, such as Java, Python, SQL, and/or JavaScript (and familiarity with modern web stacks such as React is a plus).
• Knowledge of performance and reliability concepts, including performance tuning, multi-threading awareness, and validation of high observability principles.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to explain quality risks and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits and wellness packages.
• 401K with company match.
• Competitive pay and paid time off.
• Full flex work weeks where possible.
• Variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement, and jury duty leave.
• 15 days of paid leave per calendar year for vacations, personal business, and illness, plus an additional 10 paid holidays per year.
• Paid Family Leave program providing up to 160 hours of paid leave in a rolling 12-month period for eligible employees.
• Short and long-term disability benefits, life, accidental death and dismemberment, personal accident, critical illness, and business travel and accident insurance.