Principal Quality Engineer - Remote

Optum Tech is a global leader in health care innovation, and they are seeking a Principal Quality Engineer to drive quality engineering strategy and automation excellence. This role involves collaborating with engineering and product teams to ensure high-quality delivery through modern automation frameworks and continuous improvement practices.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and execute quality engineering and testing strategies across UI, API, and mobile platforms
• Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks using the following tools or equivalent technologies:
• Implement and manage testing in cloud based environments such as Sauce Labs
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring quality gates are enforced throughout the delivery lifecycle
• Drive in sprint automation, aligning test coverage with agile delivery timelines
• Partner with QE and Development Leads to define and validate clear, testable acceptance criteria
• Perform and guide load, stress, and performance testing using tools such as JMeter
• Leverage Generative AI and AI assisted testing techniques to improve test effectiveness, coverage, and efficiency
• Contribute to and evolve quality initiatives, standards, and reusable automation solutions
• Develop and maintain QE technical documentation, including frameworks, patterns, and best practices
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging QE technologies, particularly in AI, cloud, and DevOps, and apply them pragmatically
• Act as a subject matter expert for complex, ambiguous quality challenges
• Mentor and support other QE engineers; serve as a trusted technical resource across teams
• Promote a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and quality ownership
• Comply with company policies, procedures, and evolving business directives related to work environment, assignments, and organizational needs

Requirements:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 5+ years of experience in Quality Engineering and software testing
• 2+ years of experience with cloud based testing platforms (e.g., Sauce Labs)
• 2+ years of experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines
• 2+ years of experience in API testing and automation
• Solid hands-on experience with modern automation frameworks, including: Playwright and JavaScript, GitHub Actions (YAML pipelines), Node.js based test execution, MongoDB test validation, Allure reporting and structured logging (e.g., Winston)
• Hands-on experience with performance testing tools such as JMeter
• Experience applying AI driven or AI assisted testing techniques
• Experience testing high volume, customer facing applications
• Experience working with applications deployed in private and/or public cloud environments
• Experience operating in a Principal level role, influencing QE strategy across multiple teams or platforms
• Experience testing transaction intensive or clinical/healthcare domain systems, including provider workflows, data, or integrations
• Experience driving quality transformation initiatives or modernizing legacy testing practices
• Demonstrated experience coaching and mentoring engineers on advanced QE and automation practices
• Familiarity with test data management, service virtualization, and contract testing
• Exposure to AI/ML enabled products or platforms in a quality engineering capacity
• Proven solid problem solving skills with the ability to navigate less structured, complex problem spaces
• Proven excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and non technical stakeholders