Principal- Quality Engineering

About the job

Achieving our goals starts with supporting yours. Grow your career, access top-tier health and wellness benefits, build lasting connections with your team and our customers, and travel the world using our extensive route network.

Come join us to create what’s next. Let’s define tomorrow, together.

Description
United's Digital Technology team is comprised of many talented individuals all working together with cutting-edge technology to build the best airline in the history of aviation. Our team designs, develops and maintains massively scaling technology solutions brought to life with innovative architectures, data analytics, and digital solutions.

Job Overview and Responsibilities

As a Principal Quality Engineer, this role will serve as the technical leader and subject matter expert for Quality Engineering, Test Automation, and Agentic Testing across the enterprise. The position will define the technical vision, architecture, standards, and roadmap for next-generation quality platforms that leverage intelligent automation, Generative AI, observability, and autonomous testing capabilities to improve software quality, engineering productivity, and delivery speed.
The Principal Quality Engineer is responsible for designing and implementing enterprise-scale automation frameworks, AI-powered testing solutions, and quality intelligence platforms that enable teams to proactively predict, prevent, detect, and resolve quality issues throughout the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). This role will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Platform, DevOps, Security, and Data teams to ensure quality is embedded into every stage of software delivery.
As a technical leader, this individual will drive the adoption of Agentic Quality Engineering practices, including autonomous test generation, intelligent test execution, self-healing automation, defect prediction, and AI-assisted root cause analysis. The position will establish engineering standards, reference architectures, and governance frameworks that ensure quality solutions are scalable, maintainable, secure, and aligned with enterprise objectives.
The Principal Quality Engineer will continuously evaluate emerging technologies, AI capabilities, and industry best practices, leading innovation initiatives and influencing engineering roadmaps across the organization. This position is accountable for advancing enterprise automation maturity, improving quality outcomes, and enabling the transition from traditional test automation to autonomous quality engineering.

• Quality Roadmap Definition: • Define and lead the enterprise technical strategy, architecture, standards, and roadmap for Quality
• Engineering, Automation, and Agentic Testing capabilities

• Scale Automation: • Design and implement scalable automation frameworks and AI-powered quality platforms that improve software quality, engineering productivity, and delivery efficiency

• AI-Driven Innovation: • Drive the adoption of Agentic Quality Engineering practices, including autonomous test generation, intelligent test execution, self-healing automation, and AI-assisted defect analysis to improve efficiency, coverage, and delivery speed

• Technical Execution and Governance: • Establish governance, engineering standards, and best practices for automation, AI-enabled testing, quality intelligence, and continuous testing solutions

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: • Partner with Engineering, Product, Platform, Security, DevOps, and Data teams to embed quality, automation, and observability throughout the SDLC, defining modern quality gates with high standards for engineering excellence

• High-Performance and Data-Driven: • Leverage quality analytics, observability, production telemetry, and predictive models to identify risks, optimize testing strategies, leveraging quality metrics, AI effectiveness measures, operational KPIs, and customer outcomes to continuously improve software reliability and engineering efficiency

• Strategic Leadership and Guidance: • Lead innovation initiatives, evaluate emerging technologies, mentor engineering teams, and influence enterprise-wide quality transformation and automation maturity to build a state-of-the-art AI-enhanced quality engineering culture

Qualifications
What’s needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree
• Computer Science, Engineering, Business Administration, or related field
• 5+ years of management experience in Quality Engineering or IT leadership related role
• 5+ years of experience implementing Test Automation frameworks
• 5+ years of experience in supporting release automation (CICD) and application performance testing
• Strong project organizations skill, including prioritization, planning and organization
• Experience with cloud, distributed, microservice, mainframe and desk top based technology
• Understanding of AI-driven innovation and deployment of Agentic AI solutions for Autonomous test execution, Intelligent defect triage, risk prediction and Test prioritization
• Experience in application development and testing, multiple major projects delivering of med-large scale projects/programs
• Strong Programming Skills: Java, Selenium, Python or SQL
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without sponsorship
• Successful completion of interview required to meet job qualification
• Reliable, punctual attendance is an essential function of the position

What will help you propel from the pack (Preferred Qualifications):

• Master's degree
• TMMI (Test Maturity Model Integration) Certification and/or knowledge
• CSTE or any other Test Automation related certifications
• 5 – 10 years of experience in an Quality Engineering technical leadership related role
• Experience in architecting the AI automation framework for UI, system interactions, agent flows, and multimodal input/output validation
• Experience working with telemetry, logs, and debugging across large-scale systems
• Experience with AWS
• Experience in travel industry, especially airline related is a significant plus
• Strong experience performing duties related to software quality engineering and design of automated solutions to automatically validate software builds to a variety of technologies
• Experience with AI-driven innovation and deployment of Agentic AI solutions for Autonomous test execution, Intelligent defect triage, risk prediction and Test prioritization
• Experienced in designing scalable automation frameworks and robust test data architectures with enterprise-grade software production code
• Experience required in multiple technical platforms, operating systems, databases and development languages including but not limited to web, mobile, mainframe, cloud
• Experience working within a multi-disciplined, cross-functional technical organization with matrixes reporting relationship
• Community of Respect, Delighting the Customer, Transparency, Accountability, Performance
• Strong oral and written communication skills

The base pay range for this role is $140,600.00 to $191,620.00.
The base salary range/hourly rate listed is dependent on job-related, factors such as experience, education, and skills. This position is also eligible for bonus and/or long-term incentive compensation awards.

You may be eligible for the following competitive benefits: medical, dental, vision, life, accident & disability, parental leave, employee assistance program, commuter, paid holidays, paid time off, 401(k) and flight privileges.

United Airlines is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We recruit, employ, train, compensate, and promote without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, or any other protected category under applicable law. We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request an accommodation, contact JobAccommodations@united.com