Sr. Technical Manager, SDET

Alkami is a leading cloud-based digital banking solutions provider for financial institutions in the United States that helps clients to transform through retail and business banking, digital account opening and loan origination, payment fraud prevention, and data analytics and engagement solutions. Alkami’s Mobile App Platform has been certified by J.D. Power for providing clients with “An Outstanding Mobile Banking Platform Experience.”

Founded in 2009, we continue to be recognized for our intentional culture and tremendous growth (Best Place to Work in Fintech; Best & Brightest to Work For Nationally; and Comparably’s Best Company Culture, Best Career Growth, Best Engineering Team, and Best Places to Work in Dallas, among others). Through our bold investments in technology and people, we empower our clients to grow confidently, adapt quickly, and build thriving digital banking communities through tailored experiences for over 19.5M users.

As a remote-first company, most of our positions can be remote in the US, except for key roles, which will be indicated in the Job Title.

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As a Senior Technical Engineering Manager, SDET at Alkami, you will lead, mentor, and scale a team of Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) responsible for delivering high-quality, scalable, and reliable automation frameworks and testing solutions. This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical execution, requiring you to stay close to the codebase and contribute directly to framework design, automation architecture, and quality infrastructure—spending approximately 20% of your time in hands-on coding and reviews.
You will own and evolve Alkami’s quality engineering strategy, driving quality-first practices across multiple product domains. Partnering closely with engineering, product, DevOps, and security, you will embed quality early in the development lifecycle through shift-left testing, continuous validation, and observability-driven feedback loops. As a senior technical leader, you will also focus on scaling people, processes, and platforms that enable reliable, fast, and secure software delivery at enterprise scale.

Key Responsibilities & Duties

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of SDETs focused on full-stack automation across Web, Mobile, and API layers.

• May lead, mentor, and develop one to two Technical Engineering Managers (TEMs) and their teams.

• Contribute directly to the design, architecture, and development of test automation frameworks, tools, and libraries (~20% hands-on coding).

• Architect and evolve scalable automation frameworks and testing infrastructure to improve test reliability, maintainability, and velocity across distributed systems.

• Define and execute enterprise-level quality strategies encompassing functional, regression, integration, exploratory, performance, and reliability testing.

• Partner with development, product, DevOps, and security leaders to design and implement holistic testing strategies that ensure high-quality releases.

• Integrate automated testing within CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins or GitHub Actions to ensure quality gates and early defect detection.

• Oversee and interpret results from performance, load, and scalability testing using tools such as JMeter or Gatling; incorporate observability signals into quality metrics.

• Define and track key quality metrics (e.g., defect escape rate, automation coverage, stability) to drive data-informed quality improvements.

• Champion modern quality engineering practices including shift-left testing, mocking, service virtualization, contract testing, and risk-based validation.

• Ensure robust and scalable test environments, data management, and automation infrastructure that support rapid delivery cycles.

• Lead hiring, onboarding, and professional development for SDETs, fostering a culture of ownership, inclusion, and continuous improvement.

• Represent quality engineering in enterprise programs, influencing architectural and design decisions to ensure reliability, performance, and customer trust.
   

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
   

• 10+ years of experience in software or quality engineering, including:
   

  • 5+ years in a technical leadership or management role leading SDET or QA teams.
     

• Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Python.
   

• Deep expertise in automation frameworks and tools such as Playwright, Selenium, Appium, JUnit/TestNG, RestAssured, and Postman.
   

• Proven success in designing and scaling test automation frameworks in microservices or cloud-based architectures.
   

• Hands-on experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
   

• Strong understanding of performance testing (e.g., JMeter, Gatling) and interpreting system-level metrics.
   

• Solid foundation in testing pyramid principles, mocking, service virtualization, and test data management.
   

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams.
   

• Strong analytical mindset with proven ability to drive measurable improvements in product quality and release velocity.
   

Preferred:

• Experience in cloud-native environments (AWS preferred), including Lambda, EKS, CloudFront, and related services.
   

• Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools (e.g., Datadog, Grafana, CloudWatch) to drive production validation and feedback loops.
   

• Experience in regulated environments (e.g., FinTech), with exposure to compliance testing, audit traceability, and secure test data management.
   

• Understanding of modern reliability and resilience practices, including chaos engineering, contract testing, and canary deployments for progressive release validation.

The salary range for this position is: TBDCool Things to Know

Not Just Any Company: Alkami has an awesome diverse and inclusive environment. We have a FUN culture and offer great benefits, including remote-first environment, unlimited paid time off, 401(k) with employer match, and more.

Work Authorization: We cannot offer employment sponsorship at this time. Candidates must be eligible to work in the US for full-time employment.

Recruiters: We are not looking for outside recruiting firms to help us in this search. Thank you for understanding.

Pay Transparency: As of January 1, 2023, new states and locales have enacted pay equity laws that require more pay transparency by employers in the following states: California, Colorado (effective January 1, 2021), Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington.

The Important Stuff

Alkami Technology is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Prohibits Discrimination and Harassment of Any Kind: Alkami is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Alkami are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Alkami will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. Alkami encourages applicants of all ages.

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J.D. Power 2024 Mobile App Platform Certification ProgramSM recognition is based on successful completion of an audit and exceeding a customer experience benchmark through a survey of recent servicing interactions. For more information, visit jdpower.com/awards.