Senior Application Quality Engineer

Location: Troy, MI

The Senior Application Quality Engineer owns software quality assurance for enterprise business applications from requirements definition through production validation. Serving as the quality bridge between business analysts, developers, and business stakeholders, this role identifies gaps in requirements, establishes risk-based test coverage, performs hands-on validation, and provides evidence-based release-readiness recommendations. This position establishes repeatable testing practices and appropriate test automation. It is a dedicated software quality role, not an application development position or a substitute for business acceptance.

Essential Job Functions

• Partner with business analysts before development begins to review requirements, business rules, dependencies, and measurable acceptance criteria; identify gaps and recommend improvements.
• Translate approved requirements into risk-based test strategies, traceable scenarios, test data, and expected outcomes before work moves to development or QA.
• Own functional, integration, end-to-end, regression, negative, and data-integrity testing for application changes, production corrections, and client projects.
• Validate end-to-end enterprise application workflows and cross-system impacts, including transactions, user-facing and administrative functions, reporting, scheduled interfaces, and client-specific business processes.
• Test APIs, file exchanges, scheduled/batch jobs, web interfaces, authentication flows, and upstream/downstream dependencies at the appropriate level.
• Reproduce defects; document clear steps, severity, supporting data, and expected versus actual results; collaborate with developers on correction and retest.
• Independently verify application behavior and data integrity through read-only SQL queries, test outputs, reports, and application interfaces; document discrepancies and refer code-level corrections to developers.
• Build and maintain reusable test cases, regression suites, and appropriate UI/API automation to reduce repeat defects and unnecessary manual retesting.
• Coordinate test scope, environments, release dependencies, and responsibilities across business analysis, development, infrastructure, and operations.
• Establish and apply QA entry/exit criteria for development handoff, test/Beta validation, and production release; document gaps, risks, and exceptions.
• Provide a clear QA readiness recommendation with test evidence, open defects, known limitations, and risk; support business acceptance and IT release approval without replacing those approvals.
• Perform targeted post-deployment smoke testing, investigate escaped defects, and continuously improve test coverage and the software delivery lifecycle.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Five or more years of software quality engineering experience with demonstrable ownership of test planning, execution, defect management, and release validation for enterprise applications.
• Ability to turn business requirements and workflows into actionable test scenarios and to identify ambiguous, incomplete, or untestable acceptance criteria.
• Hands-on experience with functional, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing of web applications, APIs, and data-driven business processes.
• Strong SQL querying skills in Microsoft SQL Server, including the ability to write SELECT queries, use joins, filters and aggregations, and independently validate application data, reporting results, and system integrations. Application coding, stored-procedure development, and database administration are not required.
• Ability to evaluate application results, identify data inconsistencies, and document reproducible defects with objective evidence; programming and database development are not required.
• Experience creating, maintaining, or coordinating automated functional, API, or regression tests using established QA frameworks and tools.
• Ability to understand application and integration behavior well enough to challenge assumptions, explain defects, and recommend risk-based improvements.
• Strong written communication, defect evidence, cross-functional facilitation, and experience working within a structured SDLC and release process.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with test management, Azure DevOps Server, Postman, Playwright, Selenium, or comparable enterprise quality tools.
• Experience testing legacy and modern enterprise applications, including .NET- or IIS-hosted systems, without responsibility for writing or maintaining application code.
• Experience with complex multi-client business systems, external integrations, scheduled jobs, and quality metrics or test automation programs.
• ISTQB or comparable software-testing certification; valued but not required.

Core Competencies

• Proactive quality ownership throughout the SDLC
• Independent judgment, constructive challenge, and practical risk assessment
• Strong collaboration across business analysis, development, and operations
• Disciplined defect investigation, evidence, and requirements traceability
• Continuous improvement, reusable testing, and appropriate automation