Automation Engineer

About Accenture Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Find out more about us at www.accenture.com. Role purpose The Automation Engineer is responsible for designing, building, maintaining and improving automated quality checks that enable delivery squads to shift testing left and build quality into delivery from day one. The role exists to move away from a traditional tester model and towards an engineering-led quality model. The Automation Engineer is expected to work with squads during requirements, design, development, CI/CD, release and post-release verification to create fast, reliable feedback loops and reduce the cost of defects. ISTQB describes the test automation engineering discipline as designing, developing, implementing and maintaining test automation solutions. Role summary The Automation Engineer will work within or across to define automation approach, build automated tests, improve testability, support CI/CD integration, maintain automation frameworks and provide reliable quality signals. The role requires software engineering capability, quality engineering judgement, strong collaboration and a shift-left mindset. The Automation Engineer should be comfortable working with APIs, services, data, UI/mobile interfaces, CI/CD pipelines, test environments and defect analysis. This role should help squads answer: What should be automated? At what level should it be automated? When should it run? What confidence does it provide? What risk remains? How do we make the feedback fast, stable and trusted? Key responsibilities Shift-left quality Participate in requirement refinement, design and planning. Review requirements and acceptance criteria for testability. Identify automation opportunities before development starts. Work with Technical Analysts to clarify test scenarios, edge cases and expected behaviours. Work with Software Engineers to ensure solutions are testable. Identify quality risks, automation gaps and test data needs early. Support the squad to prevent defects rather than only detect them later. Automation design and development Design, develop and maintain automated tests. Build automated checks across API, integration, service, UI, mobile, end-to-end or post-release verification layers as appropriate. Develop reusable automation utilities, libraries, fixtures and patterns. Maintain automation frameworks. Write clean, readable and maintainable automation code. Apply peer review and pull request practices to automation code. Ensure automation is version-controlled and aligned to engineering standards. Refactor automation to reduce duplication, brittleness and maintenance cost. Test pyramid and automation strategy Apply test pyramid thinking to determine the right level of automation. Avoid defaulting to expensive UI or end-to-end automation when lower-level checks provide faster and more stable feedback. Define smoke, regression, integration and critical journey automation coverage. Identify where unit, component, contract, API or service tests should be owned by Software Engineers. Partner with QE Leads to shape squad-level and program-level automation strategy. Track automation debt and recommend improvements. CI/CD integration Integrate automated checks into CI/CD pipelines. Configure automated test execution for pull requests, branch builds, deployments or scheduled runs as appropriate. Support pipeline quality gates where agreed. Monitor test execution time, reliability and failure trends. Reduce flaky tests and false positives. Ensure test results are visible, actionable and trusted. Work with DevOps, Platform or Software Engineers to improve pipeline feedback loops. Shift-left guidance highlights the need to embed testing into workflows and avoid unstable pipelines caused by slow or unreliable tests. Test data and environment readiness Identify test data needs early. Build or support reusable test data setup and teardown approaches. Manage environment dependencies and constraints. Support mocking, stubbing or service virtualisation where appropriate. Identify risks caused by unstable environments or unavailable dependencies. Work with squads to make automation resilient without hiding real defects. Quality reporting and insights Report automation coverage, execution results and reliability. Highlight quality risks and coverage gaps. Provide meaningful automation metrics, not vanity reporting. Support release readiness with evidence-based quality signals. Analyse automation failures and defect trends. Identify recurring failure patterns and recommend preventative action. Release and production confidence Support release readiness assessment. Build and maintain automated smoke or post-release verification checks. Support post-release verification activities. Participate in defect triage. Participate in incident response where escaped defects or automation gaps are relevant. Contribute to post-incident reviews and preventative actions. Improve automation based on production learning. Required experience The successful candidate will have experience in: Test automation engineering or software engineering with strong automation focus. Building and maintaining automated tests in modern delivery environments. Working with CI/CD pipelines. API, integration, service, UI, mobile or end-to-end automation. Writing automation code in relevant languages or frameworks. Working with version control and pull request workflows. Analysing failures and debugging automation issues. Working in agile squads. Collaborating with engineers, QEs, analysts and product stakeholders. Managing test data and environment dependencies. Supporting release verification or production smoke test