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Role purpose

The Automation Engineer is responsible for designing, building, maintaining and improving automated quality checks that enable delivery squads to shift testing left and build quality into delivery from day one.

The role exists to move away from a traditional tester model and towards an

engineering-led quality model. The Automation Engineer is expected to work with squads during requirements, design, development, CI/CD, release and post-release verification to create fast, reliable feedback loops and reduce the cost of defects. ISTQB describes the test automation engineering discipline as designing, developing, implementing and maintaining test automation solutions.

Role summary

The Automation Engineer will work within or across to define automation approach, build automated tests, improve testability, support CI/CD integration, maintain automation frameworks and provide reliable quality signals.

The role requires software engineering capability, quality engineering judgement, strong collaboration and a shift-left mindset. The Automation Engineer should be comfortable working with APIs, services, data, UI/mobile interfaces, CI/CD pipelines, test environments and defect analysis.

This role should help squads answer:

• What should be automated?

• At what level should it be automated?

• When should it run?

• What confidence does it provide?

• What risk remains?

• How do we make the feedback fast, stable and trusted?

Key responsibilities

Shift-left quality

• Participate in requirement refinement, design and planning.

• Review requirements and acceptance criteria for testability.

• Identify automation opportunities before development starts.

• Work with Technical Analysts to clarify test scenarios, edge cases and expected behaviours.

• Work with Software Engineers to ensure solutions are testable.

• Identify quality risks, automation gaps and test data needs early.

• Support the squad to prevent defects rather than only detect them later. Automation design and development

• Design, develop and maintain automated tests.

• Build automated checks across API, integration, service, UI, mobile, end-to-end or post-release verification layers as appropriate.

• Develop reusable automation utilities, libraries, fixtures and patterns.

• Maintain automation frameworks.

• Write clean, readable and maintainable automation code.

• Apply peer review and pull request practices to automation code.

• Ensure automation is version-controlled and aligned to engineering standards.

• Refactor automation to reduce duplication, brittleness and maintenance cost.

Test pyramid and automation strategy

• Apply test pyramid thinking to determine the right level of automation.

• Avoid defaulting to expensive UI or end-to-end automation when lower-level checks provide faster and more stable feedback.

• Define smoke, regression, integration and critical journey automation coverage.

• Identify where unit, component, contract, API or service tests should be owned by Software Engineers.

• Partner with QE Leads to shape squad-level and program-level automation strategy.

• Track automation debt and recommend improvements.

CI/CD integration

• Integrate automated checks into CI/CD pipelines.

• Configure automated test execution for pull requests, branch builds, deployments or scheduled runs as appropriate.

• Support pipeline quality gates where agreed.

• Monitor test execution time, reliability and failure trends.

• Reduce flaky tests and false positives.

• Ensure test results are visible, actionable and trusted.

• Work with DevOps, Platform or Software Engineers to improve pipeline feedback loops.

• Shift-left guidance highlights the need to embed testing into workflows and avoid unstable pipelines caused by slow or unreliable tests.

Test data and environment readiness

• Identify test data needs early.

• Build or support reusable test data setup and teardown approaches.

• Manage environment dependencies and constraints.

• Support mocking, stubbing or service virtualisation where appropriate.

• Identify risks caused by unstable environments or unavailable dependencies.

• Work with squads to make automation resilient without hiding real defects.

Quality reporting and insights

• Report automation coverage, execution results and reliability.

• Highlight quality risks and coverage gaps.

• Provide meaningful automation metrics, not vanity reporting.

• Support release readiness with evidence-based quality signals.

• Analyse automation failures and defect trends.

• Identify recurring failure patterns and recommend preventative action.

Release and production confidence

• Support release readiness assessment.

• Build and maintain automated smoke or post-release verification checks.

• Support post-release verification activities.

• Participate in defect triage.

• Participate in incident response where escaped defects or automation gaps are relevant.

• Contribute to post-incident reviews and preventative actions.

• Improve automation based on production learning.

Required experience

• The successful candidate will have experience in:

• Test automation engineering or software engineering with strong automation focus.

• Building and maintaining automated tests in modern delivery environments.

• Working with CI/CD pipelines.

• API, integration, service, UI, mobile or end-to-end automation.

• Writing automation code in relevant languages or frameworks.

• Working with version control and pull request workflows.

• Analysing failures and debugging automation issues.

• Working in agile squads.

• Collaborating with engineers, QEs, analysts and product stakeholders.

• Managing test data and environment dependencies.

• Supporting release verification or production smoke testing.

• Improving automation reliability and reducing flaky tests.

Required skills and capabilities

Engineering Skills

• Strong coding or scripting capability.

• Ability to design maintainable automation frameworks.

• Understanding of software engineering principles.

• Experience with source control and pull requests.

• Understanding of CI/CD concepts.

• Ability to troubleshoot failed tests and pipeline issues.

• Ability to work with APIs, services, databases, logs or integration points.

• Understanding of mocking, stubbing, test data setup or service virtualisation.

• Ability to write clean, reusable and maintainable automation code.

Quality engineering skills

• Strong understanding of test design.

• Strong understanding of automation strategy.

• Ability to apply test pyramid thinking.

• Ability to identify high-value automation coverage.

• Ability to distinguish between product defects, automation defects and environment issues.

• Ability to define smoke, regression and post-release verification suites.

• Ability to assess testability during refinement and design.

• Ability to identify edge cases, failure modes and quality risks. Delivery and collaboration skills

• Ability to work in agile delivery teams.

• Ability to communicate quality risks clearly.

• Ability to partner with engineers and analysts early.

• Ability to coach others on automation practices.

• Ability to work with delivery pressure without sacrificing quality judgement.

• Ability to prioritise automation based on risk, value and maintainability.

• Ability to influence without formal authority.

Desirable technical experience

• Depending on squad needs, experience may include:

• API automation frameworks.

• UI automation frameworks.

• Mobile automation frameworks.

• Contract testing.

• Performance or reliability test automation.

• Accessibility automation.

• Security test automation support.

• Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins or similar CI/CD tooling.

• Cloud-based test execution.

• Test reporting dashboards.

• Observability tools, logs and monitoring.

• Synthetic monitoring or production smoke checks.

• Service virtualisation or mock frameworks.

• Data setup and teardown automation.

Qualifications

• Relevant tertiary qualification in technology, software engineering, computer science, information systems or equivalent industry experience.

• Automation, testing, cloud, DevOps or agile certifications are desirable but not mandatory.

• Practical automation delivery experience is more important than certification alone.

Benefits of working at Accenture:

• 18 weeks paid parental leave

• Long & short-term career break opportunities

• Structured career development program

• Local and international career opportunities.

• Certified as a Family Inclusive Workplace™

• Flexible Work Arrangements - centered around Accenture’s Truly Human ethos and our commitment to supporting the health and wellbeing of our people.

• We are proud to be in the top 3 of last year’s Diversity & Inclusion Index!

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