Principal Software Quality Engineer

Principal Software Quality Engineer

This position can be remote in the US or hybrid in our American Fork, UT office 2-3 days per week.

Job Summary

The Principal Software Engineer in Test is the highest-level individual contributor role within the Software Engineering in Test discipline. This role combines deep expertise in test automation, quality engineering, and performance testing with strategic leadership and departmental influence.

The Principal Software Quality Engineer is accountable for driving managed, metrics-driven testing maturity across the Dentrix Engineering organization, ensuring testing is planned, risk-based, measurable, and continuously improved. This role ensures quality is built into every phase of the Software Development Life Cycle, testing effectiveness is objectively tracked, and defects are prevented and not just detected before impacting customers.

What You Will Do

Testing Standards & Quality Leadership

• Drive testing standardization across Dentrix Engineering organization
• Define, document, and maintain repeatable and measurable testing best practices, guidelines, and standards
• Ensure consistent, predictable test planning, execution, and documentation across teams
• Partner with Release Management to define and enforce clear entry and exit quality gates for all releases
• Establish and own quality metrics, dashboards, and reporting used to inform release decisions and leadership availability for all Dentrix teams
• Lead initiatives to reduce defect escape rates through root cause analysis, trend analysis and proactive quality improvements
• Ensure testing efforts are risk-based, prioritizing coverage based on customer impact, system complexity and change risk

Performance Testing Ownership

• Own and drive the Dentrix Engineering performance testing strategy, ensuring performance issues are identified early and resolved before impacting customers
• Assess and improve the performance testing lab environment (infrastructure, tools, processes)
• Develop and execute a roadmap to mature Dentrix Engineering's performance testing capabilities from reactive validation to proactive risk detection
• Establish performance benchmarks, thresholds, and reporting to support data-driven release readiness decisions

Strategic Leadership & Influence

• Research, evaluate, and recommend emerging testing technologies, tools, and frameworks that support predictable, scalable quality
• Partner with Architecture to gain alignment and approval for new standardized test architectures and testing approaches
• Guide Dentrix department-wide test architecture and quality strategy, with secondary influence on organization-wide practices
• Provide leadership to testing and quality engineering guilds within Dentrix Engineering
• Champions shift-left testing, defect prevention, and continuous improvement, reinforcing quality as a managed engineering discipline
• Present resting strategy, quality trends, defect metrics, and performance insights to senior leadership and executive stakeholders

Technical Excellence & Enablement

• Design and architect complex test automation solutions that meet business requirements
• Build test systems with emphasis on reliability, scale, maintainability, and measurable effectiveness
• Establish and maintain test automation architecture, including frameworks and CI/CD integration, and reporting
• Implement comprehensive test strategies including unit, integration, system, automation, and performance testing

Mentorship & Capability Building

• Mentor and coach engineers in risk-based testing, test design, automation, and performance engineering
• Provide technical leadership on test architecture decisions across Dentrix teams
• Deliver training and enablement sessions on testing metrics, quality analysis, tools, frameworks, and best practices

Qualifications

What You Will Have

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering and/or software engineering in test with 5+ years in senior or lead test engineering roles
• Strong hands-on experience in 2+ programming languages (e.g., C#, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, PowerShell, etc.)
• Expert ability to design, build, and scale managed enterprise-grade test automation frameworks
• Deep expertise in CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and API/contract testing
• Advanced experience with performance testing, database testing, and modern system architectures
• Proven ability to define, implement, and enforce testing standards and quality metrics across multiple teams
• Strong understanding of test effectiveness, defect analysis and quality reporting, and shift-left quality practices
• Demonstrated success driving predictable quality outcomes, continuous improvement and a quality-first culture
• Exposure to software testing maturity models (i.e. Beizer or TMMi) and experience applying metrics and risk-informed decisions at scale
• Ability to lead and influence without direct authority
• Excellent communication and executive-level presentation skills
• Expert-level problem-solving and diagnostic abilities in complex systems

Nice to Haves

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field
• ISTQB Expert-Level certifications (CTEL-ITP or CTEL-TM)
• Cloud certifications (AWS, Azure)
• Deep experience with cloud-native testing strategies
• Prior experience modernizing or transforming legacy test practices at scale

Key skills/competency

• Test Automation
• Quality Engineering
• Performance Testing
• CI/CD
• Test Strategy
• Defect Prevention
• Risk-Based Testing
• Technical Leadership
• Test Architecture
• Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)