Lead Quality Engineer - (POS Modernization)

Kitestring is a 25 year old start up in Northwest Arkansas.

We provide technical expertise to various clients delivering innovations that improve how customers shop and the enterprise operates.

At Kitestring Technical Services, our mission is to share our collective knowledge to positively impact our employees, clients, and communities.

Our vision is to be the most trusted partner in technology consulting.

We believe people enable technology and vice-versa which is why we are in the business of both.

We persistently challenge the barriers to diversity, inclusion, and empathetic cooperation. Our Core Values are Transparency, People Driven, Empowered, Quality focused and socially responsible.

Our values direct our company in how we do business and enhance the lives of our employees.

Do our values speak to you? About the role Our client is a national convenience & fuel retailer—is rebuilding their point-of-sale (POS) platform.

We’re seeking a Lead Quality Engineer (Python) to own the test strategy, automation architecture, and quality outcomes for cloud-native, event-driven microservices powering store operations.

What you’ll do Own quality end-to-end:

• define the test strategy across services, data streams, and UIs (API, integration, contract, performance, reliability).

Lead a small team:

• mentor 2–3 QEs/SDETs; shape the backlog, write test charters, break down work, and drive sprint quality gates.

Build the automation platform:

• implement Python-based frameworks (pytest + fixtures, Testcontainers, internal libs, CLI tools).

API & microservices testing:

• create robust API suites, schema validation (Avro/JSON Schema), idempotency checks, and resiliency scenarios.

Event-driven validation:

• test Kafka (or Pulsar) pipelines—consumer lag, DLQs, retries/backoff, compaction, retention policies.

Data quality:

• validate relational and NoSQL stores (SQL Server/Postgres + DynamoDB/MongoDB/Cassandra); ensure correctness, consistency, and performance.

Performance & reliability:

• establish SLAs/SLOs; run load/soak/chaos scenarios (e.g., Locust/k6, fault injection); analyze bottlenecks.

Edge & store scenarios:

• design offline-first tests, network-flap simulations, payment/EMV flows, device integrations (scanners, printers, pinpads).

Shift-left quality:

• integrate linting, unit/contract tests, and security checks into CI; champion quality metrics and dashboards.

Compliance & security:

• support PCI and privacy standards; implement data masking, secrets handling, and auditability.

Cross-functional collaboration:

• partner with developers, product, security, and store ops; coordinate with offshore teams to deliver at pace.
• What you’ll bring 8+ years in Quality Engineering with strong Python automation experience; 3+ years leading QEs/SDETs or quality programs.
• Expertise with pytest , fixtures/parametrization, and requests/httpx ; solid understanding of OOP and test design patterns.
• Proven hands-on with microservices and REST/gRPC testing; contract testing (e.g., Pact) and schema evolution strategies.

Kafka/Pulsar testing experience:

• producers/consumers, DLQs, exactly/at-least-once semantics, and reprocessing strategies.

Cloud & containers:

• experience on any major cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure) with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes: deployments, resources, health checks).

CI/CD:

• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar; test orchestration, artifacts, parallelization, and environment provisioning with IaC.

Data skills:

• SQL proficiency (joins, indexes, query plans) and NoSQL validation patterns; familiarity with data migration testing.

Observability:

• logs/metrics/traces (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, and cloud-native APM such as Datadog/New Relic/CloudWatch/Cloud Trace) to detect regressions and flakiness.

Security awareness:

• OAuth2/OIDC flows, secret management, and PCI touchpoints across payment paths.
• Retail/POS or payments domain experience is a strong plus (EMV, tokenization, settlement, offline queues).
• Nice to have UI automation with Playwright (web) and/or lightweight mobile testing for store devices.
• Testcontainers, WireMock/mock servers, and service virtualization.
• Chaos engineering basics; blue/green, canary, and feature-flag testing.
• Experience with DDD/event sourcing and data versioning strategies. Powered by JazzHR