Senior SDET

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior SDET based in India.

This is a senior testing role focused on the resilience, correctness, and reliability of distributed backend systems supporting complex account provisioning and onboarding workflows.
You will validate inter-service APIs, request and response behavior, data persistence, and downstream account lifecycle states.
The role involves executing pre-approved tracer and replay scenarios within designated staging environments and analyzing observable system behavior.
You will work across synchronous gateway checks and asynchronous verification or risk pipelines to validate layered defenses.
Strong technical evidence capture, structured documentation, and traceability are central to the role.
You will collaborate with backend engineering and other testing workstreams to investigate defects, validate fixes, and reconcile findings across system layers.
The position is well suited to an experienced SDET with strong distributed-systems knowledge, API testing expertise, and disciplined investigative skills.

• Analyze distributed-system APIs to validate correctness, consistency, and failure handling across services supporting account creation, data persistence, and related record-linking processes.
• Execute pre-approved request variations and boundary-validation scenarios using sanitized tracer payloads against designated staging endpoints.
• Investigate system behavior under malformed, malicious, or unexpected inputs within approved testing scenarios and document findings clearly.
• Capture complete request and response evidence, including HTTP status codes, latency, headers, and payload bodies, in accordance with approved data-handling requirements.
• Validate near-real-time inline checks performed at the gateway independently from longer-running background verification and risk pipelines, confirming that each layer behaves as expected.
• Verify data persistence, referential integrity, and correct linkage of related records and relationships written by backend services.
• Execute controlled API replay suites and compare expected behavior with observed results.
• Correlate replay outcomes with API schemas and network evidence produced by middleware testing workstreams.
• Document observable account and CID lifecycle behavior, including relevant downstream state changes, for technical handoff.
• Capture and archive test logs and technical evidence in a structured, retrievable format to support audits and post-incident reviews.
• Collaborate with backend engineering teams to reproduce, isolate, and validate fixes for distributed-system defects.
• Contribute to backend and middleware reliability test strategies, including failure-mode and chaos-style testing within approved environments.
• Maintain traceability between test evidence, identified defects, and system requirements.
• Reconcile backend observations with frontend FSM and middleware/API evidence produced by earlier testing workstreams.

Requirements

• 5–8+ years of strong experience testing distributed systems and analyzing inter-service API behavior.
• Hands-on experience with request payload tampering, fuzzing, or adversarial API testing techniques.
• Strong understanding of layered defense architectures, including the distinction between synchronous or inline validation and asynchronous or background verification processes.
• Familiarity with testing data persistence and relational or hierarchical integrity within backend data stores.
• Demonstrated discipline in test-log archival, evidence capture, structured documentation, and technical traceability.
• Solid understanding of backend and middleware architectures, system boundaries, and common distributed-system failure modes.
• Familiarity with API testing tools and scripting techniques for building custom fuzzing and request-tampering test cases.
• Strong analytical and investigative skills, with the ability to root-cause complex and systemic defects.
• Experience executing controlled API replay or staging validation is strongly preferred.
• Experience correlating API responses with observable application, account, or lifecycle states is preferred.
• Experience supporting audit, compliance, or evidence-based reporting requirements is an advantage.
• Ability to work within defined testing controls and execute only approved scenarios in designated staging environments.
• Strong technical communication skills and the ability to document findings in a precise, structured, and reproducible manner.

Benefits

• Rate of $13.50 per hour.
• Freelance engagement lasting 5 weeks.
• Remote work from India.
• Commitment of 33 hours per week.
• Start date of 19 October.
• Potential opportunity for full-time employment based on performance and project needs.
• Flexible project-based work that can accommodate different schedules.
• Exposure to complex distributed systems, API testing, backend reliability, and AI-related technical workflows.
• Opportunities to work with diverse technical projects and develop skills through varied assignments and structured learning.
• Access to a global professional community with real-time support.
• Potential pathways toward longer-term or permanent opportunities based on project needs and performance.