Job Description
Position Overview
At PNC, our people are our greatest differentiator and competitive advantage in the markets we serve. We are all united in delivering the best experience for our customers. We work together each day to foster an inclusive workplace culture where all of our employees feel respected, valued and have an opportunity to contribute to the company’s success. As a Software Engineer Sr- Backend Quality Engineer/Automation within PNC's Technology organization, you can be based in Birmingham, AL; Strongsville, OH; Dallas, TX; Pittsburgh, PA; Cleveland, OH; or Phoenix, AZ.
The Lending Payments platform delivers business-critical money movement capabilities. Quality Engineering is a proactive, end-to-end discipline that integrates quality principles throughout the delivery lifecycle (not just late-stage testing). This role focuses on building and scaling automated testing capabilities, strengthening quality gates, and reducing defect leakage through disciplined test strategy, automation frameworks, and reliable execution in CI/CD.
PNC is an in-office company that fosters a supportive culture where employees can thrive and achieve balance. We encourage candidates to connect with their recruiter and hiring manager to understand workplace expectations and ensure the role aligns with their goals.
PNC will not provide sponsorship for employment visas or participate in STEM OPT for this position.
Job Description
Preferred experience in:
- Strong experience in test automation engineering (building and maintaining automation frameworks and suites).
- Experience designing layered test strategies and integrating automated tests into CI/CD with meaningful quality gates.
- Comfort partnering with developers on testability, defect prevention, and release readiness; evidence-based communication style.
- Experience testing APIs/services and validating data flows; working familiarity with SQL and data validation concepts is a plus.
- Experience in regulated or high-integrity domains (payments, banking, money movement) with strong focus on correctness and auditability.
- Experience with BDD-style executable specifications and/or API automation tools commonly used in enterprise environments (tool-agnostic).
- Experience with performance testing concepts and test data management practices.
Core Responsibilities
- Hands-on ownership of automation frameworks and suites for one or more services/products.
- Drives automation coverage and reliability improvements; owns triage workflows and reduces flakiness and runtime.
- Partners with engineers to ensure stories are testable and quality gates are met before promotion.
- Design, build, and maintain automated test frameworks and suites for APIs and services; expand coverage while keeping tests deterministic and fast.
- Create reusable automation patterns (data builders, helpers, stubs/mocks where appropriate) to reduce duplication and improve maintainability.
- Own regression automation health: flake reduction, runtime optimization (parallelization where appropriate), and clear failure triage signals.
- Define and implement a layered test strategy (unit, component/service, integration, end-to-end) aligned to change risk and payment criticality.
- Integrate automated tests into CI/CD and define/enforce quality gates for merge and promotion readiness (evidence-based Definition of Done).
- Drive defect prevention: analyze defect leakage trends, run retrospectives on escapes, and implement systemic fixes (test gaps, unclear requirements, missing validations).
- Partner with Engineers, Architects, and Business Systems Analyst/Product Owners early to clarify acceptance criteria, edge cases, and testability; translate behavior into executable checks where appropriate.
- Provide quality feedback during design and product review cycles; promote testability, observability, and safe change patterns.
- Support release readiness by validating test evidence and coordinating with change/release processes as needed.
- Contribute to performance and resiliency validation approaches where appropriate (test data, scenarios, and automation hooks).
- Ensure monitoring and diagnostic artifacts exist for failures (logs/metrics/traces) and that test failures are actionable.
PNC Employees take pride in our reputation and to continue building upon that we expect our employees to be:
- Customer Focused - Knowledgeable of the values and practices that align customer needs and satisfaction as primary considerations in all business decisions and able to leverage that information in creating customized customer solutions.
- Managing Risk - Assessing and effectively managing all of the risks associated with their business objectives and activities to ensure they adhere to and support PNC's Enterprise Risk Management Framework.
Qualifications
Successful candidates must demonstrate appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities for a role. Listed below are skills, competencies, work exp