Senior SDET – Python, Playwright & CI/CD Career Growth in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
A High-Impact Engineering Role, Not Just a QA Position
The explicit framing — "this is not a feature-testing role" — signals a company that wants a senior engineering peer, not a checkbox tester. This is a platform and enablement role, which typically carries more organizational influence and visibility than embedded QA positions. Coaching engineers and defining standards are leadership-adjacent responsibilities that can accelerate a path toward Staff Engineer or Engineering Manager tracks.
Skills Development & Market Demand
- Playwright + Python is a high-demand combination in 2024–2025, particularly as more companies migrate away from Selenium.
- CI/CD integration and Kubernetes (K8S) experience on AWS are transferable, evergreen cloud-native skills.
- Distributed systems understanding positions you well for platform engineering or SRE transitions.
Compensation & Culture Signals
No salary range is disclosed, which is a mild red flag for transparency — though quarterly performance bonuses and 28 days PTO are above-average for the EMEA market. The 48-hour response guarantee and human-reviewed applications (no AI screening) are positive signals about recruitment culture. The remote-first, sustainability-focused framing suggests a values-driven startup or scale-up rather than a large enterprise.
Green Flags
- Clear, structured 4-step interview process with defined formats
- Quality ownership culture — engineers own testing, SDET enables them
- Annual retreats suggest investment in team cohesion despite full remote structure
About the Role
We are looking for a Senior SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) to improve software quality across the engineering organization through automation, testing platforms, quality standards, and engineering enablement. This is not a feature-testing role. The focus is on building scalable quality solutions and helping teams own quality.
Our Stack
- Programming language: Python
- DB: MySQL / MongoDB
- DevOps: AWS / Jenkins / K8S
- Web: Playwright
What You'll Be Doing
- Build and maintain test automation frameworks
- Develop reusable testing tools and libraries
- Improve test reliability and reduce flaky tests
- Manage test data and testing infrastructure
- Integrate testing into CI/CD pipelines
- Implement release quality gates
- Improve deployment confidence and testing efficiency
- Define testing strategies and best practices
- Support teams with complex testing challenges
- Review solutions from a quality and reliability perspective
- Coach engineers on testing and quality ownership
- Create standards, documentation, and guidelines
- Drive adoption of quality practices across teams
- Analyze incidents and prevent regressions
- Track quality metrics and identify improvement opportunities
What You'll Bring
- 5+ years of testing experience
- Strong coding skills (Python or any other programming language, but willing to write in Python)
- Experience with Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or similar (we use Playwright)
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines
- Understanding of software architecture and distributed systems
What's in It for You
- Pleased is a remote-first company in pursuit of sustainability
- A competitive salary + individual performance-based bonuses every quarter
- 28 days paid annual leave
- Core working hours are 10am–3pm in your local time zone, with flexibility outside of this
- Referral bonuses & flash bonuses
- Top-of-the-line equipment provided
- Annual company retreats for great internal networking opportunities
Interview Process
- Remote video screening with our Talent Acquisition Team
- Live coding interview
- Remote video interview with Team Members (60 mins)
- Final discussion with the hiring manager (60 mins)
If you're interested, we encourage you to apply! Every application is reviewed by a member of our team (AI is not used in our recruitment process), and we aim to respond within 48 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this role fully remote or does it require office attendance?
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