Test Lead Engineer

1. Test Strategy & Planning

• Lead the development of comprehensive test strategies, test plans, test approaches and test schedules for AFC and e-payment projects.
• Analyse business, functional, technical, interface and system requirements to determine test scope, coverage and risks.
• Establish end-to-end test coverage and maintain traceability between requirements, test cases, test results and defects.
• Define appropriate testing approaches for:

1. Front-end AFC devices
2. Embedded software
3. Android/mobile applications
4. Back-office systems
5. APIs and interfaces
6. Payment processing
7. Database and transaction processing

• Estimate testing effort, resources and timelines and coordinate testing activities to meet project milestones.
• Identify testing risks and recommend appropriate mitigation measures.

2. Hands-on Test Engineering

• Personally design, develop and execute complex test cases and test scenarios.
• Perform functional, integration, system, regression, end-to-end, performance, reliability and stress testing.
• Validate complete transaction flows across reader devices, payment applications, communications networks and back-office systems.
• Develop test data and test conditions covering normal, abnormal, boundary and failure scenarios.
• Conduct exploratory testing to identify defects and system behaviours not covered by scripted test cases.
• Participate directly in system integration, customer acceptance and production verification activities.

3. Test Automation& Engineering

• Design, develop and maintain automated test frameworks and reusable test utilities.
• Identify suitable test scenarios for automationbased on risk, frequency, complexity and expected return on investment.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.
• Develop automation for UI, mobile, API, databaseand end-to-end transaction testing.
• Maintain test scripts and frameworks to minimisetest flakiness and ensure repeatable results.
• Evaluate and introduce new testing technologies, including AI-assisted testing where appropriate.
• Coach Test Engineers in automation practices and coding standards.

4. AFC & Payment System Testing

• Lead testing of AFC transaction flows involving:

1. Contactless smart cards
2. CEPAS
3. EMV contactless payments
4. NFC/mobile wallets
5. Reader/validator devices
6. Fare gates
7. Back-office transactionprocessing
8. Clearing and settlement

• Validate transaction integrity, including successful, declined, interrupted, duplicate and failed transactions.
• Test device-to-back-office communication and transaction synchronisation.
• Support testing of card clash/card collision scenarios and other contactless transaction edge cases.
• Analyse transaction logs, device logs, protocol traces and backend records to identify transaction failures.
• Ensure testing adequately covers revenue-impacting scenarios and potential transaction discrepancies.

5. Performance & Reliability Testing

• Plan and execute performance, load, stress and endurance testing.
• Establish performance benchmarks and monitor:

1. Transaction response time
2. Throughput
3. Transaction success rate
4. Failure rate
5. System resource utilisation
6. Network latency
7. Device performance

• Analyse performance bottlenecks across device, application, network, middleware, database and backend components.
• Work with development and infrastructure teams to identify and resolve performance issues.
• Conduct reliability and endurance testing for systems operating continuously in public transport environments.

6. Defect Management & Root Cause Analysis

• Lead defect identification, classification, prioritisation and tracking through to closure.
• Conduct defect triage with development, system engineering and project teams.
• Perform technical rootcause analysis for complex defects.
• Analyse logs, stack traces, database records, network traffic and transaction traces to isolate defects.
• Distinguish between application, device, communication, infrastructure, configuration and data-related issues.
• Verify fixes and conduct appropriate regression testing before release.
• Identify recurring defectsand recommend preventive actions.

7. Test Environment & Laboratory Management

• Coordinate and maintain test environments covering devices, applications, databases, network componen