Senior Test Software Engineer

About Focus

Focus is a digital services firm dedicated to delivering on projects with impact in the civic tech space. We partner with states and federal agencies—including the Department of State, IRS, and the Department of Education—transform outdated systems into modern, efficient solutions that deliver better outcomes for citizens.

At Focus, we believe in doing impactful work while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We encourage our team to log off at the end of the day, take time off when needed, and bring their best selves to work. We are intentional about staying on the cutting edge of our tooling and practices—from modern cloud development environments to integrating AI into our daily workflows—so our engineers spend their time solving hard problems, not fighting dull tools.

We are a fully remote company, and all employees must be based in the continental U.S. Some projects may require occasional travel, approximately 1-2 times per year.

Role Overview

As a Senior Test Software Engineer, you will lead the quality engineering architecture and automation strategy for critical civic technology infrastructure. You will move far beyond traditional testing roles to serve as a software quality technical authority—architecting scalable automated test suites, building robust continuous integration workflows, and serving as a team representative in a complex environment with myriad vendors and dozen of stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Establish software quality standards, test architecture guidelines, and defect prevention strategies across delivery streams.
• Architect, build, and maintain scalable end-to-end (E2E) automated UI and API test suites using Playwright and TypeScript across multiple product verticals.
• Partner with product managers, developers, and regulatory teams early in the development lifecycle to evaluate requirements and assess risks.
• Identify, log, and track defects end-to-end, driving root cause analysis and collaborating with developers on fixes.
• Define top-level test strategies, write comprehensive test plans, and manage the full system verification lifecycle.
• Work with development or integration teams to validate unit tests and/or assist in pair programming techniques to validate code flows.
• Act as a Subject Matter Expert in the area of testing, able to provide feedback and best practice advice for test-related questions
• Skills & Qualifications
• 5+ years of professional experience writing and maintaining testing frameworks for full-stack applications.
• Experience testing complex systems that interact with multiple external services, databases, and third-party APIs.
• Proven experience working on cross-functional agile teams, estimating complex tasks, and directly communicating technical updates to client stakeholders.
• Strong diagnostic skills for troubleshooting complex, distributed multi-vendor application failures and microservices.
• Prior experience working on federal government digital service projects or civic tech programs.
• Experience implementing synthetic test data generators or complex mock data services for enterprise integrations.

Requirements

• Legal authorization to work in the United States
• Ability to meet any other requirements for government contracts for which candidates are hired
• Work authorization that doesn’t require visa sponsorship, now or in the future
• May be subject to a government background check or security clearance, depending on the contract