ZR_284_Staff SDET

About the Role

Staff SDETs at Priority are domain-level test-infrastructure architects. You own how the test infrastructure is structured for your domain, decide how it evolves, and are accountable for itslong-term reliability. This is the first level where infrastructure ownership is explicit and consequential — you don't just build well within the domain's frameworks; you own them, evolve them, and hold the standards that keep them trustworthy.

You're hands-on. Still. At Priority, the Staff title doesn't graduate you out of the framework code— it puts you in the hardest infrastructure work in the domain, and keeps you close to the pipelines and the flaky gates that eat the team's time, so your direction stays grounded in reality. You lead by example — your framework code, your review bar, your AI-native practice, and your engineering judgment set what the domain's automation looks like at its best.

You're the infrastructure authority for your domain: you write the architecture decision records(ADRs) for the significant infrastructure choices, you set the automation standards teams build within, you own the CI/CD quality-gate design for the domain, and you drive AI-native test practices where agents generate, execute, and triage on infrastructure you built for exactly that.

Your primary partnerships live on the team as a quality-engineering trio. The Staff Quality Engineer for your domain owns what the platform must prove and why — the strategy. You own the engineering that executes that strategy at scale. Staff Software Engineers own the code being tested — you partner with them on designing for test ability, contract testing, and the practices that keep automation trustworthy. Together, the three of you — Staff SDET, Staff QE,Staff SE — are the domain's quality-engineering trio. You solve hard problems together, not by throwing artifacts over the wall.

You know the customer and business outcomes your domain's automation protects — not slide-deep, but real. Regression cycle time is your flagship business metric: every hour you shave off the domain's regression cycle is an hour teams get back to ship to customers. You frame infrastructure investment (build vs. adopt vs. retire) deliberately, in business terms — hours saved, defects caught, gate false-positive rate driven down — because that's how the case for infrastructure work wins roadmap space. The business and customer context reaches you through your QE and SE partners plus your own direct time with the data — production defect trends, the incidents your automation should have caught, the customer flows the domain depends on.

When the domain hits a high-pressure moment — a broken pipeline blocking a critical release, agate failure at a defining delivery, a flaky infrastructure issue stalling the team's work — you're

the engineer the team looks to for the fix. You show up, take the lead, and stay on it until it's resolved, regardless of time of day, day of week, or weekend. The hours don't matter; the outcome does.

Your work — the infrastructure health, the ADRs, the standards you set — contributes to the domain's contribution to the workstream Engineering Maturity Model (EMM) score. Developing SDETs in the domain toward design ownership is part of the job — some grow past you into bigger roles.

What You'll Do

Stay hands-on — design, build, review, and operate the parts of the domain's test infrastructure that matter most; lead by example, not by exhortation.
Own the domain's test-infrastructure architecture: frameworks, test data, CI/CD integration patterns, and quality gates; write infrastructure ADRs others cite, and keep an infrastructure-debt register.
Partner with the Staff Quality Engineer on strategy — they own what must be validated and why; you own the engineering that executes it — and with Staff Software Engineers on designing for test ability, contract testing, and framework adoption; the three of you are the domain's quality-engineering trio

·      Absorb customer and business context through your QE and SE partners plus your own direct time with the data — production defect trends, incidents your automation should have caught, the customer flows the domain protects.

·      Frame infrastructure investment (build vs. adopt vs. retire) deliberately, in business terms —hours saved, defects caught, gate false-positive rate — so the case for infrastructure work wins roadmap space

·      Drive AI-native test practices — agents generate, execute, and triage on infrastructure you built for it; be the most AI-forward test engineer in the domain, by visible evidence

·      Own the domain's quality gates so each one earns its place — protecting releases without taxing them; false-positive gate failures trend toward zero.
Own the domain's automation health; map coverage to the QE's risk strategy and manage automation debt as a first-class engineering concern

·      Set reliability targets for the domain's test infrastructure and meet them; engineer away recurring failures; treat pipeline health like service health — monitored, alerted, postmortemed

·      Make your test infrastructure itself usable by machines — documented, versioned, and invokable by agents; own a self-service test-platform experience for the domain, with friction measured and driven down.

·      Engineer security and compliance checks into the domain's pipelines — automated, not bolted on — including data-classification and retention checks

·      Lead during the domain's high-pressure moments — a broken pipeline blocking a critical release, a gate failure at a defining delivery — regardless of time of day, day of week, or weekend

·      Document the infrastructure so it survives any individual leaving, including you; develop SDETs in the domain toward design ownership

What Success Looks Like

·      The domain's test infrastructure is documented and teams build within it; your ADRs get cited the infrastructure-debt register exists because you maintain it

·      Regression cycle time in the domain trends down measurably on your watch — the teams that depend on your infrastructure ship faster because of what you built.

·      Flakiness and pipeline friction trend down, and gate false-positive rate approaches zero

·      AI agents validate safely on infrastructure you designed for them

·      You, the Staff QE, and the Staff SEs on the team operate as a real quality-engineering trio —no throwing artifacts over the wall, no siloing

·      SDETs in your domain grow into design ownership; some grow past you into bigger roles

·      The domain's contribution to the workstream EMM score trends up on your watch — because the infrastructure is measurably better, not because you graded generously

·      If you took a month off, the infrastructure wouldn't skip a beat

What We're Looking For

• Roughly 8–12 years of relevant engineering experience — a guide, not a gate; we hire on demonstrated impact, not years
  
• A multi-year track record owning test-infrastructure architecture for a domain, including a written decision history (ADRs or equivalent) teams have built against
  
• Hands-on credibility — you still write the framework code, debug the flaky gate, and stay close to the pipelines; comfort holding the bar by example, not exhortation
  
• Demonstrated regression-cycle compression through automation, with measurable lead-timeimpact you can point to
  
• Demonstrated partnership with QEs and SEs as a real quality-engineering trio — jointproblem-solving, not artifact hand offs
  
• Business fluency — you frame infrastructure investment in the language leaders act on (hours saved, defects caught, cycle time cut), and you know what customer flows the domain protects.
  
• Comfort and credibility leading through high-pressure moments — pipeline breaks, blocking gate failures, defining deliveries — regardless of hour
  
• Daily, judgment-driven AI-assisted development; the experience to lead AI-native test practices where agents do the work at scale
  
• Security and compliance-automation fluency for regulated systems.
  
• Influence without authority — standards adopted, conflicts resolved because engineers wanted to learn from you
  
• A strong writer — at this level, infrastructure architecture is a writing job
  

Nice to Have

• 5 Days Working
  
• One Complimentary Meal per Day
  
• Internet Reimbursement
  
• Gym Reimbursement
  
• Group Medical Insurance
  
• Mental Health support benefits
  
• Relocation Assistance (if Applicable)