Staff QA Engineer

About the role

Welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery... the stuff dreams are made of. Who We Are... When we say, "the stuff dreams are made of," we're not just referring to the world of wizards, dragons and superheroes, or even to the wonders of Planet Earth. Behind WBD's vast portfolio of iconic content and beloved brands, are the storytellers bringing our characters to life, the creators bringing them to your living rooms and the dreamers creating what's next... From brilliant creatives, to technology trailblazers, across the globe, WBD offers career defining opportunities, thoughtfully curated benefits, and the tools to explore and grow into your best selves. Here you are supported, here you are celebrated, here you can thrive. Your New Role: The Staff, QA Engineer is responsible for defining and delivering test strategy and automation that validates mission-critical advertising workflows across WBD's global ecosystem. This role establishes practical standards for quality engineering, modernizes legacy testing into maintainable automation, and strengthens release confidence through robust functional, integration, performance, and data-quality validation. Your Role Accountabilities: Test Strategy & Quality Automation - Own quality strategy for complex, distributed advertising systems across real-time and batch workflows. - Design comprehensive test approaches across APIs, microservices, data pipelines, and end-to-end flows (UI and non-UI). - Build and scale automated test suites with a strong focus on determinism, reliability, and maintainability. - Integrate regression, performance, and data validation into CI/CD to enable high-confidence releases. - Drive shift-left testing by partnering early in design and development cycles to improve testability and prevent defects. Expectation: helps teams shift from "testing features" to "engineering quality into the system." Test Frameworks, Tooling & Quality Gates - Architect and standardize scalable test frameworks and quality enforcement mechanisms across teams. - Build reusable automation frameworks across layers (unit, integration, contract, e2e, data validation) - Establish service virtualization, test data management, and environment orchestration capabilities - Define and enforce quality gates (coverage, flakiness, latency budgets, contract validation) within CI/CD - Leverage observability (logs, metrics, traces) to enable faster triage and root cause isolation Expectation: establishes reusable frameworks and quality gates that reduce fragmentation and improve release confidence. Cross-Functional Quality Partnership - Act as a quality partner to Engineering, Product, and Data teams to ensure robust system behavior and business correctness. - Define acceptance criteria, test plans, and risk-based release strategies for new features and platform changes - Validate complex integrations across ad decisioning, identity, activation, and measurement systems - Ensure correctness of data flows, attribution logic, and reporting pipelines - Incorporate privacy, compliance, and data governance validations into test strategies Expectation: drives quality outcomes through clear requirements, risk-based testing, and strong release readiness. Quality Leadership & Mentorship - Raise the bar for quality engineering practices within your product area and partner teams. - Lead design and test strategy reviews with a focus on scalability, reliability, and failure modes - Mentor engineers on automation patterns, testability, and defect prevention - Drive root cause analysis and systemic fixes for production issues - Champion a culture of quality ownership across teams Expectation: makes quality a shared responsibility, not a QA function. Qualifications & Experience - Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field. - Quality Engineering Expertise: 8+ years of experience building automated testing and quality practices for enterprise-scale systems and complex integrations. - Automation & Tooling: Coding skills in one or more languages (e.g., Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript) and experience with test automation frameworks and CI/CD integration. - API, Integration & Performance Testing: Hands-on experience validating APIs and distributed services, including performance/load testing, latency analysis, and test environment strategy. - Operational Excellence: Skilled in CI/CD quality gates, test data management, debugging, and observability practices that accelerate defect detection and resolution. - AdTech Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with advertising workflows (ad serving, forecasting, yield optimization, identity, measurement, and campaign execution) and the quality risks inherent in real-time systems. - Collaboration & Mentorship: Demonstrated ability to partner with engineering, product, and data teams to define testable requirements, lead triage, and mentor others in quality engineering practices. How We Get Things Done... This last bit i