Director - SDET

Comcast brings together the best in media and technology. We drive innovation to create the world's best entertainment and online experiences. As a Fortune 50 leader, we set the pace in a variety of innovative and fascinating businesses and create career opportunities across a wide range of locations and disciplines. We are at the forefront of change and move at an amazing pace, thanks to our remarkable people, who bring cutting-edge products and services to life for millions of customers every day. If you share in our passion for teamwork, our vision to revolutionize industries and our goal to lead the future in media and technology, we want you to fast-forward your career at Comcast.

Job Summary

This job is responsible for steering software development strategies that support the organization's goals. It involves setting coding standards, leading teams in the creation of innovative software, and managing ongoing support for existing platforms. Key duties include overseeing software releases, collaborating with managers on project delivery, and handling large-scale budgets. It also focuses on integrating new technologies to improve development practices and partnering cross-functionally to align with broader organizational objectives.

Job Description

Function: Freewheel | Global Quality Engineering 

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we’re making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements from around the world. 

Freewheel, a Comcast company, is seeking a Director, SDET to lead the global quality engineering organization across all Freewheel platforms. This leader will drive test strategy, automation architecture, and quality engineering practices, ensuring reliable and scalable releases across distributed systems. The role requires strong technical leadership while partnering closely with global product, engineering, and operations stakeholders to embed quality at every stage of the software lifecycle. 

Location: Chennai 

Key Job Responsibilities 

Quality Engineering Strategy & Delivery 

• Test strategy: Own and evolve the enterprise-wide QA strategy, ensuring consistent quality across Freewheel’s diverse product portfolio. 

• Automation architecture: Define and implement a robust unified automation framework supporting UI, API, and Data validation. 

• Environment strategy: Drive test environment planning, provisioning, and reliability to support large-scale distributed systems. 

• Predictable delivery: Align QA execution with agile release cycles, proactively managing risks and dependencies. 

• Metrics & governance: Establish KPIs for defect leakage, automation coverage, and release readiness, with transparent reporting. 

Technical Leadership 

• Raise QA standards: Champion excellence in test design, automation frameworks, performance testing, and observability. 

• Scalable validation: Ensure QA systems are built for scale, resilience, and high availability in revenue-critical environments. 

• Innovation: Introduce modern validation techniques including contract testing, service virtualization, and chaos testing. 

• Mentorship: Provide coaching and strategic direction to QA managers and teams (2-4 teams comprising 40+ engineers). 

Organizational Leadership 

• Global alignment: Represent QA initiatives across Freewheel globally, ensuring strong alignment on priorities and strategy. 

• Cross-functional partnerships: Collaborate with Product, UX, Engineering Ops, Data and Engineering to embed quality into every stage of development. 

• Talent development: Hire, grow, and retain high-performing SDETs and QA managers, fostering a strong leadership pipeline. 

• Culture building: Cultivate a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous learning across the QA organization. 

• Drive performance excellence through clear expectations, differentiation, and promotion readiness. 

• Build organizational depth through thoughtful succession planning across both technical and managerial career tracks. 

• Cultivate a culture of ownership, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning. 

Minimum Qualifications & Requirements 

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Engineering, or related technical field. 

• 18+ years of experience in software engineering, with deep expertise in automation and distributed systems. 

• 10+ years of leadership experience managing QA teams and developing managers. 

• Strong background in test automation frameworks (e.g., Cypress, Playwright, Selenium) and backend validation using modern languages (Python, TypeScript, Golang, Java). 

• Experience with API testing, contract validation, and service virtualization. 

• Proven expertise in performance and scalability testing for distributed microservices architectures. 

• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes), and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI etc). 

• Strong database validation experience (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and exposure to NoSQL systems (MongoDB, Cassandra). 

• Experience validating event-driven systems and Kafka-based architectures. 

• Track record of partnering cross-functionally to deliver high-quality releases. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Prior experience in the AdTech domain. 

• Familiarity with real-time bidding (RTB), ad serving, user targeting, or analytics platforms. 

• Experience working in global technology organizations or India operations of U.S.-based companies. 

• Exposure to high-throughput, low-latency systems and their validation challenges. 

Employees at all levels are expected to:

• Understand our Operating Principles; make them the guidelines for how you do your job.
• Own the customer experience think and act in ways that put our customers first, give them seamless digital options at every touchpoint, and make them promoters of our products and services.
• Know your stuff be enthusiastic learners, users and advocates of our game-changing technology, products and services, especially our digital tools and experiences.
• Win as a team make big things happen by working together and being open to new ideas.
• Be an active part of the Net Promoter System a way of working that brings more employee and customer feedback into the company by joining huddles, making call backs and helping us elevate opportunities to do better for our customers.
• Drive results and growth.
• Support a culture of inclusion in how you work and lead.
• Do what's right for each other, our customers, investors and our communities.

Disclaimer: This information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees in this role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications.

Comcast is an equal opportunity workplace. We will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

Base pay is one part of the Total Rewards that Comcast provides to compensate and recognize employees for their work. Most sales positions are eligible for a Commission under the terms of an applicable plan, while most non-sales positions are eligible for a Bonus. Additionally, Comcast provides best-in-class Benefits to eligible employees. We believe that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most, and should help you care for those who matter most. That’s why we provide an array of options, expert guidance and always-on tools, that are personalized to meet the needs of your reality - to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. Please visit the compensation and benefits summary on our careers site for more details.

Education

Bachelor's Degree

While possessing the stated degree is preferred, Comcast also may consider applicants who hold some combination of coursework and experience, or who have extensive related professional experience.

Relevant Work Experience

15 Years +