Senior QA Automation Engineer

Work with cutting edge technology, making the world a safer and more secure place. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) offers an opportunity to solve some of the world’s most challenging technical problems in Electronic Warfare, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, RF sensing, Sensor Fusion and distributed systems. Working with high profile customers across militaries, government agencies, airports, critical infrastructure, law enforcement and many others.

With one of the largest listed defence company market capitalisations in Australia and having raised approximately $250m in 2024 alone, DroneShield is undergoing hypergrowth stage, fuelled by rapidly increasing use of drones for nefarious applications, from battlefield, to terrorism, to contraband delivery and commercial espionage.

This role is in the DroneShield Sydney headquarters in Sydney CBD. There are approximately 320 staff based in the 4,000sqm facility today, scheduled to grow to approximately 400 staff by end of 2025. Overseas on the ground presence includes USA, Denmark, Mexico, and UAE, as well as distributors in over 70 countries globally.

About the role

DroneShield is seeking a Senior QA Automation Engineer with relevant experience to join the team in Sydney, Australia. The position will report to the Quality Engineering Manager with a dotted line to the Software Engineering Lead. The role primarily focuses on testing the software features of a high-throughput, real-time data processing system that utilises ML algorithms. We are looking for a Quality Assurance Automation Engineer to work on the quality and reliability of our products at all levels of development. You will be responsible for creating and implementing QA strategies and process improvements. Attention to detail, problem solving and a pragmatic, practical approach to technical and process issues is required. Key challenges of the role include delivering test automation, CI/CD pipelines with the documentation and all the details from the test strategy, implementing automated and manual test cases for existing and future features, and working with the development team to improve the test coverage in every step of the development process, including unit and integration tests, API testing, and System tests (E2E).

Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations

- Pair with Software Engineers during design and code reviews to identify risks early, review acceptance criteria and requirements, and negotiate practical testability hooks.
- Design, implement, and maintain scalable test automation frameworks (e.g., GTest, PyTest, Selenium, k6) integrated into GitLab CI/CD pipelines, leveraging CMake + Ninja artifacts and Docker-based test environments.
- Inclusion of static and dynamic analysis tools into CI/CD pipelines.
- Develop test plans that verify both functional and non-functional performance requirements.
- Execute System test scenarios in lab environments while ensuring clear boundaries between unit, integration, and system test coverage. Analyse regressions, validate results, and provide sign-off for release builds.
- Refine test coverage metrics, identifying overlaps across unit, integration, and system tests to ensure efficient and effective testing strategies.
- Translate platform requirements into a dynamic QA plan, ensuring test coverage evolves alongside the scaling of algorithms, protocols, and frontend features.
- Work confidently within Linux and Docker environments, utilising Bash scripting to automate tasks such as environment setup, test execution, and system diagnostics.
- Confidently work within on-premises GitLab CI/CD environments, ensuring test reports and artifacts are correctly generated, stored, and integrated into the pipeline flow. Manage and optimise YAML files while troubleshooting build and deployment workflows.

Qualifications, Experience and Skills

- BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
- 3 to 5 years of Software Quality Assurance experience.
- Proficient in usage of Docker containerisation within Linux environments, including volume management and orchestration for testing environments.
- Comfortable analysing and testing performance-critical code.
- Strong scripting skills in Python to build data-driven tests and validation suites.
- Familiarity with PyTest for functional and system testing, including advanced features like fixtures, parameterisation, and parallel test execution.
- Strong experience creating and managing automated pipelines in a modern CI/CD toolchain (GitLab is preferred).
- Familiarity working with Atlassian tools such as JIRA and Confluence.
- Experience in automating testing of C++ and/or CUDA back-end systems is highly favourable.
- Experience in automating testing of Golang-based APIs is highly favourable.
- Experience in automating testing of React & TypeScript UI using tools like Selenium or similar is highly favourable.
- Must hold or be able to obtain an Australian Security Clearance (Baseline or NV1 is ideal).

Note for recruitment agencies: We do not accept unsolicited candidates from external recruiters unless specifically instructed.

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