Senior SDET

Job title: Senior Software Development Engineer in Test

Reports to: Director, Engineering 

Department: Software Development

Location: Remote

Grade: 21

About Product & Technology at Priority: 

Our vision in Product & Technology is to engineer the world's most resilient, AI-native financial ecosystem that empowers businesses to transcend table-stakes and lead the agentic future, where every financial transaction is intelligent, every developer is accelerated, and every experience is unified.

At Priority, we are building the Priority Commerce Engine, a unified platform that enables businesses to collect money, store money, lend money, move money, and build modern commerce experiences at scale.

About the Role:

Senior SDETs at Priority are the automation engine of their teams — strong independent engineers who own test-framework quality across significant components and raise the automation bar around them. You handle complex, cross-system automation challenges without close guidance and make the whole team's automation better through reviews, framework improvements, and design input.

The software your automation protects moves money — onboarding, payments, settlements, lending, compliance, and risk — where a missed defect can mean a broken settlement or a damaged customer relationship. You take that seriously without treating it as ceremony.

You're a multiplier. The team is better because you're on it: tests are less flaky, suites are more maintainable, framework ergonomics improve because of you. Reviews of test code you give teach — engineers around you get better because of them. You mentor SDETs in engineering craft and in AI-native technique, and you develop the judgment about where AI-generated automation helps and where it misleads.

You're a peer in the team's quality-engineering trio with the team's Quality Engineer (who owns strategy) and the team's Senior/Staff Software Engineers (who own what's being tested). The three roles interlock: QE decides what must be validated; SEs design what's being built; you build the automation that proves it works. You solve hard problems together, not by handoffs.

You frame automation proposals in the language leaders act on — hours saved, defects caught, cycle time cut, gate false-positive rate driven down — not coverage percentages. The business and customer context reaches you through your QE and SE partners plus your own direct time with the data (production defect trends, support tickets, customer flows), and you spend that time on your own initiative, not because someone puts it in a briefing.

This is where you start developing the infrastructure judgment that grows into Staff-level ownership.

What You’ll Do: 

• Own framework quality across significant components; complex automation ships reliably

• Improve framework ergonomics so engineers write tests willingly in the frameworks you maintain

• Design framework improvements spanning components, and identify and fix infrastructure debt

• Give reviews of test code that teach; drive down suite flakiness and automation debt in your area

• Improve pipeline speed and the quality of gate signals; drive false-positive failures toward zero

• Treat suite and pipeline health like service health — monitored, alerted, and reviewed in postmortems

• Build deliberate contract-test coverage across your components, and add the security scanning gates that matter

• Find and fix the flow-killers: slow suites, flaky gates, environment contention

• Partner with your team's Quality Engineer on strategy and with Senior/Staff Software Engineers on designing for testability; the three of you together are the team's quality-engineering trio

• Absorb customer and business context through your QE and SE partners plus your own direct time with production defect trends, support tickets, and customer flows

• Frame automation proposals in hours saved, defects caught, cycle time cut, and gate false-positive rate driven down — not coverage percentages

• Mentor SDETs in engineering craft and AI-native technique

What Success Looks Like:

• Complex automation ships reliably, and the framework improvements you make get adopted

• Engineers seek your review on test code, and pipeline reliability and speed improve on your watch

• False-positive gate failures trend toward zero, so teams trust the gates

• Your judgment about where AI-generated automation helps and misleads guides the team's practice

• You, your QE partner, and the Senior/Staff SEs on the team operate as a real quality-engineering trio — problems get solved together, not handed off

• You can defend automation investment in the business terms leaders act on

• You're the go-to for your frameworks — and actively making sure you're not the only one

• You're growing into domain-level infrastructure ownership — early signals of the Staff trajectory

Candidate Requirements:

• Roughly 5–10 years of relevant experience — a guide, not a gate; we hire on demonstrated impact, not years

• A track record owning test frameworks or automation infrastructure through production use at scale

• Strength in CI/CD reliability and speed, contract and integration testing, and treating test infrastructure as production (monitoring, alerting, incident response)

• A genuine mentor who raises others' test-engineering craft

• Comfort operating as a peer in a quality-engineering trio with QEs and SEs — joint problem-solving, no handoffs

• Business fluency — automation framed in hours saved, defects caught, and cycle time cut

• Security test-automation experience in systems handling sensitive data

• Daily AI-assisted development, with the judgment to teach others where AI-generated automation helps and where it misleads

Nice to Have:

• Fintech or other regulated-industry experience

• Playwright, Cypress, or similar modern test-framework fluency

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent practical experience

Work Environment & Culture:

We believe that performance and experience go hand in hand - an exceptional employee experience is earned through contribution. We are a results-driven team, grounded in our core values: ownership, authenticity, service, trust, innovation, and camaraderie.

Our culture is built for those who want to make an impact. We challenge each other to grow, celebrate progress, and support one another through shared goals and real connection. Whether you're building technology, serving clients, or supporting internal teams, you’ll be part of a company that empowers you to perform at your best and be known for results.

Compensation and Benefits:

Compensation range: $142,900 – $178k

We invest in the whole employee - personally and professionally. Our benefits package is designed to support your well-being, growth, and success - both inside and outside of work.

Financial Wellness

• Bonus programs

• 401(k) match

• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)

• HSA and FSA options

• Financial wellness resources and employee discount programs

Health & Well-being

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage

• Mental health support for employees and dependents through Lyra Health

• Family planning and women’s health benefits through Carrot

• Gym membership reimbursement and virtual wellness programs (including yoga)

Time Off

• 3 weeks PTO to start, with unlimited PTO after year one

Growth & Development

• Education expense reimbursement

• Leadership development programs

• Certified Payments Professional (CPP) certification support

We believe great performance starts with feeling supported - and we’ve built our benefits with that in mind.

 Traditional Physical Requirements:

• Requires prolonged sitting, standing, bending, stooping and stretching.

• Requires the ability to lift 10 pounds.

• Requires eye-hand coordination, manual dexterity and a normal range of hearing and vision (with or without correction).

Join our team at Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. and be part of a dynamic and innovative company that is transforming the financial technology landscape. Together, we can shape the future of payments and banking solutions while providing unmatched value to our clients.