Junior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

As a Junior SDET at OrderMesh Inc, you'll join our automation-first quality team and help build test coverage across a complex microservices platform (Kafka, MongoDB, REST APIs, async workflows). This is a great entry point into modern quality engineering: you'll work alongside senior SDETs and developers to write and maintain automated tests, learn how quality gates fit into CI/CD, and grow your skills in test automation, observability, and distributed systems testing. This role is about learning and contributing hands-on not about owning strategy solo with plenty of mentorship and room to grow. What You'll Do Write and maintain automated tests for APIs, UI, and service-level validation using TypeScript, Node.js, and Playwright, under the guidance of senior team members. Support the build-out of load and resilience testing suites with Grafana k6, learning how to benchmark and stress-test distributed systems. Help integrate test execution into GitHub Actions pipelines, ensuring your tests run cleanly on commits, PRs, and deployments. Get hands-on exposure to distributed-systems testing: Kafka event flows, service mocking with Microcks, and validating contracts between services. Help maintain test observability dashboards in Grafana and learn to read quality metrics alongside logs and performance data. Perform exploratory testing to complement automated coverage and catch edge cases. Collaborate with developers, SREs, and product managers, and actively ask questions to build your understanding of the platform. 1-2 years of experience in software testing, QA, or automation (academic projects do not count). Hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tools, for example: using or building AI coding agents, agent skills, or evaluation harnesses as part of your testing or development workflow. Working knowledge of JavaScript/TypeScript or another modern programming language. Exposure to or coursework in CI/CD concepts; hands-on experience with GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps is a plus but not required. Some experience with, or eagerness to learn, Playwright or similar browser automation frameworks, and load testing tools like Grafana k6. Interest in learning about message brokers (Kafka), service meshes (Istio), and API testing, including test-driven development practices. Strong problem-solving mindset and attention to detail; debugging skills that you're actively developing. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience (bootcamp graduates welcome). Enthusiasm for automation-first testing culture and eagerness to learn from senior engineers. Bonus Qualifications Exposure to Azure, Kubernetes, or containerized environments. Familiarity with contract testing concepts. Any experience with Grafana, Prometheus, or similar observability platforms. Interest in B2B, eCommerce, or fulfillment industries.