Senior QA Lead - EDA & Regulated Markets (Azure/AKS)

DescriptionAbout the ClientOur client is a globally diversified investment organization focused on long-term, value-driven investment strategies.General InformationThe position is open to full-time candidates with excellent communication skills to work on-site in Abu Dhabi (UAE) or remotely within 3h of the Abu Dhabi time zone (within 3h of UTC+4).Tasks and DeliverablesLead, design, and build end-to-end quality for Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), low-latency platform built on Solace messaging, and Azure (AKS). You will own the test strategy, plan, automation framework, CI/CD pipelines, and compliance testing. The role is hands-on and leadership-oriented: you will set standards, coach engineers, and deliver audit-ready evidence for regulated markets.ResponsibilitiesOwn test automation strategy & governanceDefine a shift-left test strategy across unit, integration, contract, E2E, performance, security, and resiliency.Establish quality gates (defects, coverage, flakiness budgets, performance SLOs) and release criteria.Shift left testing: requirements → tests → results → evidence traceability model.Build a reusable automation frameworkArchitect a test framework packaged for reuse across CEE teams.Provide libraries/utilities for API, Solace messaging, database, and contract testing.Standardize test data management, deterministic fixtures, and parallel/ephemeral execution patterns.Event-driven architecture (EDA) testingValidate producer/consumer contracts, schema evolution, and topic compatibility.Assert ordering, idempotency, exactly/at-least/at-most-once semantics, replay, DLQ handling, and deduplicate keys.Prove back-pressure, throttling, and consumer lag behavior under bursty market loads; chaos test broker clusters.Enforce schema/contract gates in CI/CD; prevent breaking changes before promote.Data-platform & reconciliation QAAutomate data quality checks for market/reference data, order/trade states, and downstream stores (SQL Server/Azure SQL).Implement reconciliation across OMS/EMS, risk, and settlement; verify lineage and PII/PCI masking where relevant.Use SQL and profiling to validate accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and SCD/versioned data behaviors.Manage golden datasets and synthetic market data at scale for repeatable regression.Pipelines, environments & observabilityEmbed suites in Azure DevOps (build → deploy → smoke → regression → perf/security) with mandatory gates (coverage, static analysis, compliance, performance).Orchestrate tests on AKS with Docker/Kubernetes, ephemeral environments.Validate OpenTelemetry to correlate trace IDs across services; validate Application Insights/Dynatrace signals in assertions.Performance & securityBaseline latency/throughput; run JMeter/LoadRunner for spike/soak/failover; collaborate on capacity tuning.Automate OWASP checks (ZAP), enforce SAST/DAST and dependency scanning (Snyk) with remediation gating.Leadership & operationsLead QA activities in the project, mentor developers on testability and quality by design.Contribute to incident response, RCA, production canary/verification suites, and reliability playbooks.Tech Stack FocusLanguages/Frameworks: C#, Python, xUnit, PyTest, Pact, Docker,Testing: xUnit, NUnit, MSTest,, Moq/AutoFixture, TestContainers-style patternsAPIs/Messaging: REST/GraphQL/SOAP, Solace (preferred), RabbitMQ or Kafka (plus)Data: SQL Server, Azure SQL; strong SQL for validation/migrations; data profiling toolsCloud/Infra: Azure, AKS, Docker/Kubernetes; Terraform/Bicep/ARMCI/CD & Quality: Azure DevOps, Git/Azure Repos, coverage/linters, policy-driven gatesPerf/Sec/Obs: JMeter/LoadRunner, OWASP ZAP, Snyk, Application Insights, Dynatrace, OpenTelemetrySecrets: Azure Key Vault(Nice) FIX conformance via QuickFIX/N simulators; schema registry toolingAdditional DetailsLocation: Abu Dhabi (UAE) or remote within 3h of Abu Dhabi time zoneWork model: Onsite in Abu Dhabi or remote within 3h of Abu Dhabi time zoneType: 40h/week ContractDuration: 6-12 months initially, with long-term engagement potentialAuthorization: Applicants must be authorized to work in their country of residence without employer sponsorshipRequirementsRequired Experience8+ years in QA/engineering with 5+ in financial/trading systems (order lifecycle, market data, risk controls)Proven delivery of pipeline-integrated .NET automation frameworks and regulated-market auditsDeep understanding of EDA QA (contracts, ordering, idempotency, replay, DLQs, back-pressure) and data-quality/reconciliationHands-on with Azure/AKS, Azure DevOps, and performance/security automation at scaleClear communicator; able to lead cross-functional quality initiatives and coach engineersStrong English proficiency requiredBonus ExperienceISTQB Advanced/CSTE, Azure Fundamentals / Azure DevOps EngineerFinance certs (CFA/FRM), Agile/Scrum experience#J-18808-Ljbffr