Staff Test Engineer

What you’ll do:

As a Staff Test Engineer at NinjaTrader, you will be a technical leader and quality evangelist driving testing strategy across complex, scalable systems and multiple engineering squads. You’ll guide automation architecture, establish quality standards, and collaborate across engineering, product, and operations to ensure releases meet the highest standards of reliability and performance. This role requires a deep understanding of both functional and non-functional testing, automation frameworks, and system-level quality assurance strategies.

In this role you will:

• Define and maintain end-to-end test strategies across client and server platforms, serving as the subject matter expert for quality across multiple products and teams.
• Design and guide implementation of automation frameworks and test architecture, ensuring scalability and maintainability across teams.
• Collaborate with developers to ensure automation-friendly application design.
• Establish performance and non-functional testing benchmarks, driving continuous measurement and improvement across releases.
• Drive the evaluation and adoption of innovative QA tools and technologies.
• Define and track quality gates, coverage metrics, and QA KPIs, ensuring they are actionable and drive measurable improvements in release quality and stability.
• Mentor QA and SDET team members on best practices, including SOLID, DRY, and KISS principles
• Participate in defining onboarding plans and training strategies for QA new hires and contractors
• Create, review, and execute end-to-end system integration and performance tests
• Conduct root cause and gap analysis for issues across environments and systems
• Drive enhancements to CI/CD pipelines and ensure automation suite scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Provide expert-level input on API testing, database validation, and test data design
• Support cross-team initiatives and maintain alignment with organizational quality objectives
• Partner with engineering and DevOps to define observability and reliability testing strategies that validate system resilience, fault tolerance, and recovery under production-like conditions.

What you’ll need:

• 9+ years of relevant experience in QA or software testing roles
• Proven expertise in both manual and automated testing for complex distributed systems
• Experience designing automation strategies and frameworks for scalable applications
• Strong skills in API testing, integration testing, and cross-platform validation
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools and automation pipelines
• Ability to guide teams in troubleshooting application, database, and cloud issues
• Excellent communication skills and collaborative mindset
• Familiarity with testing across messaging queues, security, performance, and fault tolerance scenarios
• Strong knowledge of Linux and Windows environments
• Experience evaluating and implementing QA metrics, tools, and training strategies
• Proven track record of mentoring, onboarding, and upskilling QA/SDET teams

Bonus points for:

• Experience with BDD/ATDD frameworks and modern automation testing libraries
• Familiarity with testing in cloud-native and microservices environments
• History of contributions to QA process improvements or innovations
• Involvement in test tooling evaluations and feasibility studies
• Prior leadership experience in building quality culture within high-performing engineering teams

Compensation:

The salary range for this role will be $160,000.00 - $180,000.00 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 15%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 18 days per year (some positions may qualify for more) plus seven paid holidays.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago, IL. *There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, Wisconsin.

Hybrid:

For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer:

• 20 additional flex remote days annually
• 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays