Lead QA Automation Engineer

Lead QA Automation Engineer | Playwright, C#, CI/CD | Global Payments & Banking Company Building Its Own QA Function

• Salary: RON 300,000 - 360,000 gross per year (RON 25,000 - 30,000 gross per month).
• Location: Bucharest, hybrid - 3 days in the office, 2 from home
• Employment: via a local payroll partner until the company's Romanian entity is set up

Our long-standing client, an international payments and banking group, is building its own QA function in Bucharest from scratch and wants a Lead QA Automation Engineer in first to shape it. You’ll be the first hire in a team of around nine automation engineers.

You’ll report to the Head of QA, with a dotted line to the Bucharest site lead. It’s an architect-level role with no line management. Their automation runs in silos across five to ten internal and external systems, and you’ll design the framework that brings it together while staying hands-on in Playwright. C#/.NET is their preference, though they’ll consider strong Python or Java engineers too.

Non-Negotiables

• Financial services: payments, SWIFT, banking
• Test automation framework design across integrated systems
• Playwright
• C#/.NET (Python or Java considered)
• SDET background, hands-on coding
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps
• API testing: REST, contract, schema

What You'll Work With

• C#/.Net, with some TypeScript
• Kafka and Azure Service Bus
• Azure Application Insights, KQL
• Kubernetes (K8s), Docker
• IaC: Terraform
• Web apps and legacy Windows desktop apps
• GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Foundry
• TestRail, Jira

Nice to Haves

• MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors
• AI in testing: agentic workflows, LLM evaluation
• Load testing at high transaction volumes: k6, Artillery, LoadRunner
• Service virtualisation, mocks, stubs
• Azure (AWS also fine)
• BDD: Gherkin, SpecFlow, Cucumber
• Core banking platforms

Why Join / Projects

We've worked with this client for several years and placed people across their tech teams. They're an international business with a strong reputation in payments, and this is one of the more interesting builds we're recruiting for in Bucharest.

• You’re building the function rather than inheriting one. You’ll set the framework and the standards, and help shape the culture of a growing tech hub.
• You’ll design a test pyramid weighted towards fast API, contract and integration checks, with quality built in from discovery through to production verification.
• You’ll create one framework and centre of excellence across both sides of the business, payments and banking, so you see the whole estate rather than one product.
• They’re building a template for agentic engineering across the software lifecycle, with QA as one of its pillars. You’ll help decide where AI fits into testing.

Employee Benefits

• 25 days' holiday plus Romanian public holidays
• Extra day off in your birthday month
• Private medical cover
• Annual salary review
• Support for training and study
• Long service awards

If you've built test automation in financial services and want to set up a QA function from the ground floor, apply and I'll give you a call.

Lead QA Automation Engineer | Playwright, C#, CI/CD | Lead QA Automation Engineer | Playwright, C#, CI/CD | Global Payments & Banking Company Building Its Own QA Function