Staff Software Engineer (with QE/ Automation Focus)

The Hartford is seeking a Staff Software Engineer with a focus on Quality Engineering and automation to provide hands-on technical leadership across quality practices for the Personal Lines organization, spanning cloud-native platforms and vendor integrations.

Location

Charlotte, NC (onsite)

Responsibilities

• Quality Engineering Strategy & Operating Model: Define, govern, and evolve the QE strategy, standards, and operating model to ensure scalable, high-quality delivery.
• Test Automation Architecture & Frameworks: Design, implement, and maintain robust automated test frameworks across applications to enable reliable validation of complex systems.
• Hands-On Test Automation & Problem Solving: Lead by example through hands-on creation of automated tests, review automation delivered by teams, and resolve advanced automation challenges.
• Defect Analysis & System Diagnostics: Diagnose and resolve complex defects across distributed systems and third-party integrations.
• System Testability & Reliability Engineering: Improve testability, observability, and reliability through direct code contributions and collaboration on system and application design.
• End-to-End Quality Execution: Coordinate end-to-end quality execution to ensure business capabilities are delivered with high quality from ideation through production.
• Mentorship & Engineering Excellence: Mentor engineers and SDETs on quality engineering best practices, automation patterns, and scalable test design approaches.
• AI & GenAI-Driven Innovation: Promote the adoption and effective use of AI and GenAI tools to improve testing efficiency and overall engineering productivity.

Requirements

• Experience: 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in Quality Engineering, Test Automation, or quality leadership roles.
• Technical & Engineering Expertise: Experience testing and automating across diverse platforms (Java, .NET, SaaS, COTS, and Mainframe) including cloud-native applications on AWS and/or GCP, with containerized and microservices architectures; strong API and contract testing (REST Assured, Postman/Newman) and performance, resilience, and reliability testing practices.
• Test Automation & Quality Engineering: Advanced experience designing and scaling test automation frameworks across application tiers, with hands-on expertise in Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, JUnit/TestNG, NUnit, and PyTest.
• Quality Metrics & Outcomes: Ability to define, track, and leverage quality metrics to drive improvements such as defect reduction and leakage prevention.
• Agile & Scaled Delivery: Track record of testing and quality execution within Agile and Scaled Agile frameworks, including sprint-level testing, end-to-end validation, and regression/stabilization testing.
• Leadership & Strategic Balance: Balance hands-on technical delivery with strategic leadership, influencing quality practices across teams and technology stacks.
• Soft Skills: Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, coaching, and collaboration skills, with the ability to translate quality risks into clear business and engineering trade-offs.

Technologies

• Java
• .NET
• SaaS
• COTS
• Mainframe
• AWS
• GCP
• Containerized architectures
• Microservices-based architectures
• Playwright
• Cypress
• Selenium
• JUnit
• TestNG
• NUnit
• PyTest
• REST Assured
• Postman
• Newman

Benefits

• Short-term or annual bonuses
• Long-term incentives
• On-the-spot recognition

Compensation

• Base pay range: USD 116,000 - 174,000 per year
• Equal Opportunity Employer/Sex/Race/Color/Veterans/Disability/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity or Expression/Religion/Age