Senior/Principal Automation Engineer - Secret Clearance Required

Job Location: Remote

Security Clearance: Active Secret clearance required (Interim ok)

Travel: As needed

Citizenship: US Citizenship required

Sherpa 6 is seeking a Senior or Principal Automation Engineer who wants to build, innovate, and shape the future of how we deliver world class, mission critical software. This is an individual contributor role reporting to the Quality Engineering Manager, focused on leading the technical transformation of our Quality Engineering organization as we roll out agentic AI across our testing strategy — with a strong emphasis on human-in-the-loop solutions that keep engineers in control of the process.

You'll work in a continuous feedback loop with the software organization: collecting input, designing and developing scalable automation frameworks across web, Android, and Windows, and shipping working reliable MVPs — deployed through modern GitLab CI/CD pipelines — that you refine based on real team usage and feedback. You'll help set the standard for how our Quality Engineers use AI to design tests, increase coverage, and review code, personally building the prototypes and reference implementations the broader organization adopts and relies on. If you take pride in creating systems that raise the bar for quality, reliability, and speed, you'll fit right in.

Responsibilities

• Design and own scalable, maintainable test automation frameworks that support our web, Android, and Windows products.
• Partner closely with software teams to build and evolve our end to end testing stack across the entire organization.
• Help define and champion our agentic AI approach to quality — contributing to the patterns, guardrails, and best practices that enable AI assisted test design, automated test generation, and code review.
• Work directly with teams to understand their needs, then deliver solutions using our current tools or by building new agentic AI capabilities when gaps appear.
• Create prototypes and reference implementations that make it simple for Quality Engineers to adopt new frameworks and workflows.
• Translate program and product requirements into automation design and a clear, actionable quality approach.
• Collaborate deeply with development and platform engineering to ensure automation, coverage, and quality are built in from day one.
• Contribute to quality standards and metrics — from automation expectations to AI usage guidelines — and demonstrate them through working examples.
• Provide technical support and guidance across multiple Agile teams and programs as we scale our testing ecosystem.
• Stay ahead of emerging tools and industry trends, and turn them into practical improvements that elevate our quality engineering capabilities.
• Communicate technical designs, system flows, and decisions clearly and effectively across teams.