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Senior QA Automation Engineer
Toyota Connected Europe
Source: Headcount Labs · original listing ↗
Job data: Headcount Labs, ODbL 1.0. Job descriptions belong to their employers.
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About this role
Senior QA Automation Engineer Hybrid Working (minimum 6 days per month onsite) Wrocław, Poland Who are we? Toyota is undergoing a once-in-a-century transformation from a car manufacturer into a mobility services company. Toyota Connected Europe was created to play a key role in that journey, bringing together big data, cloud intelligence and product thinking to build connected services that make mobility safer, simpler and more personal. Today, with millions of connected vehicles on the road and billions of journeys processed each year, we are continuing to grow our technical capabilities in Europe. As part of that growth, we are expanding our engineering presence in Wrocław. This role is a unique opportunity to join at an early stage of that journey in Poland. As one of the first engineers in the Wrocław team, you will have the chance not only to build software, but also to help shape how we work, influence engineering culture, and contribute to the foundations of future teams. You will work on meaningful products at real scale, as part of a collaborative international environment, while helping establish a new engineering presence for Toyota Connected Europe in Wrocław. About the role: As a Senior QA Automation Engineer, you are a tester first: you ask how things will break, then write the code that catches it. You'll choose the right testing approach for your product area based on risk, test hands-on (manually and automated), evolve our Java-based BDD frameworks, and help the people around you test better. You'll own the quality approach for your product area, end to end, as quality is a shared team responsibility, not a QA handoff. What the work really looks like: a balance of test design, exploration and collaboration with automation and engineering. The mix shifts sprint by sprint. If you love both finding problems and building reliable automation, you'll enjoy this role. The "Toyota Way" of Quality We draw heavy inspiration from our Toyota DNA. We expect our QA Automation Engineers to champion these core principles: • Jidoka (Autonomation): You will build "automation with a human touch." Your frameworks should detect abnormalities automatically and stop the "line" (the GitLab pipeline) immediately when a defect is found. • Andon Mindset: You are empowered to "pull the cord." If you identify a systemic quality risk or a recurring flake, you are expected to signal the team and prioritise the fix over new feature scripts. • Kaizen (Continuous Improvement): You will constantly analyse test metrics and execution times to eliminate Muda (waste) in our testing cycles. • Genchi Genbutsu (Go and See): When a bug occurs, you "go to the source" by digging into the code, logs, and environment to understand the real conditions of the failure. • Poka-Yoke (Error Proofing): You will design test utilities that make it "impossible" for developers to ignore edge cases or for testers to write fragile scripts. The Quality Mindset A "Professional Sceptic." You possess an uncompromising commitment to excellence that goes beyond passing scripts. • Healthy Skepticism: You don't ask "Does it work?" You ask "How will it fail?" You proactively seek out the "unhappy paths" and boundary exceptions that others overlook. • Edge-Case Mastery: You have a specialised skill for identifying "hidden" requirements. • The "Broken Window" Policy: You refuse to tolerate "flaky" tests. You treat a non-deterministic test as a critical system failure, ensuring the automation suite remains a trusted source of truth. • Zero-Defect Advocacy: You are the voice of the customer in the room, holding the line on quality even under tight delivery deadlines. What you will do: • Test approach & quality gates: Select the testing approach for your product area based on risk: what to test manually, what to automate, at which layer, and what "done" means. Define and track quality gates and metrics. • Test design & BDD: Lead refinement from a quality angle. Challenge stories, define or review acceptance criteria with product owners and developers, and translate them into executable Gherkin specifications. • Test Automation: Write clean, maintainable, deterministic tests in our Java-based BDD frameworks, including Java helpers and utilities where needed. • Manual & Exploratory testing: Go beyond the scripts to find the risks automation won't. • API & event-driven testing: Design and automate tests for REST APIs and event-driven / asynchronous flows (Kafka), covering ordering, duplicates, retries, idempotency, DLQs and eventual consistency. • Test automation & framework ownership: Write clean, maintainable, deterministic tests in our Java-based BDD frameworks (Karate, Cucumber + REST Assured), and own and evolve the framework and its utilities. • CI/CD: Own test suites and their GitLab CI integration together with DevOps; tackle flakiness and execution time and make results visible to all stakeholders. • Technical root-cause analysis: Debug failures by analysing logs, tracing requests (e.g. Datadog) and inspecting data to tell product bugs from test, environment or data issues. • Code review & mentoring: Review test code and merge requests, review colleagues' testing work, and coach developers and testers on good testing practice. About you - Here's what we need you to have: • Ways of working: You work autonomously, plan and prioritize your own work, and support and guide others in the team. • Testing: Strong test design skills (risk, boundaries, negative paths), proven hands-on manual and structured exploratory testing, and clear defect reporting. You can explain why a risk is best covered manually or by automation. • Test approach: Experience selecting a risk-based test approach for a product or feature, and defining quality gates and metrics. • Requirements & acceptance: You define or review acceptance criteria with product owners and developers and turn them into test scenarios. • BDD: Solid hands-on experience writing Gherkin (Given/When/Then) with Karate, Cucumber or similar. • Java: Strong working knowledge (OOP, Collections, Exception Handling). You can design, extend and refactor test frameworks and utilities. • API testing: RESTful services, HTTP status codes, authentication, and payload validation; JSON/XML path expressions; SQL. • Event-driven systems: Experience testing asynchronous or message-based systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS or similar), including data integrity across services. Kafka depth is a strong plus. • CI/CD & Git: Experience owning test automation in GitLab CI (or similar), Git flow and merge request reviews. • Mentoring: Experience reviewing others' testing work and coaching colleagues on testing practice. About you, still - Here's what we would love you to have: • Performance and resilience testing (Gatling, K6) • Supporting product owners with user acceptance testing (UAT) • Contract testing (e.g. Pact) • Mocking / service virtualisation (WireMock, Karate mocks) • Cloud (AWS or Azure), observability (Datadog) • Python (Behave), UI automation (Selenium) • Maven / Gradle, Postman • Using AI tools in testing, with a critical eye on their output • ISTQB certification Here's where you'll really stand out: we don't expect you to be equally deep in everything. Tell us where you're strongest: automation & CI (framework architecture, test layering, pipeline strategy, flakiness at scale) or quality approach & coaching (risk-based test planning, quality metrics, coaching on testing). Not quite senior yet? If you're close and growing fast, apply anyway. We are hiring at more than one level, and the level is agreed during the process. Now for the Soft Skills: • Collaborative Influence: You bridge the gap between Product, Dev, and QA, ensuring everyone speaks the same language via BDD. • Technical Communication: Ability to explain complex technical failures to non-technical stakeholders clearly. Equal Opportunities, Diversity & Inclusion: Toyota Connected Europe is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that celebrates the diversity of the communities where we live and do business. Every role is open to all sections of society and we are committed to providing equal opportunities to all. If you have a disability or any other additional need that requires consideration, accommodation or adjustment to the role or recruitment process, please do let us know. Don’t tick every box on the list but are interested in working for us? Please apply, we would still love to hear from you! Department: Engineering / Quality Assurance (QA) Reports to: QA Manager Location: Wrocław Remote status: Hybrid Department Software & Data Engineering Location Wrocław Remote status Hybrid