Technical Lead, Quality Assurance

Job Description:

Role Overview:

We are seeking a highly experienced Technical Lead/Senior QA Engineer to design, architect and lead end-to-end integration testing and validation strategies across our OSS (Operations Support Systems) platforms. In this role, you will drive quality governance for complex multi-vendor ecosystems spanning Configuration Management (CM / Config Manager), Inventory Management (IM), Fault Management (FM), Performance Management (PM), Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Cloud Observability workflows. The ideal candidate possesses deep technical expertise in telecom service assurance, network synchronization parameters and a strong background in validating highly distributed data layers— specifically leveraging Graph databases for complex network topologies alongside Redis for highthrough put, real-time caching and data streaming pipelines.

Key Responsibilities :
• Integration & E2E Validation: Architect and execute comprehensive integration testing strategies across highly interconnected OSS environments, ensuring flawless structural data orchestration between northbound/southbound APIs, multi-vendor EMS/NMS and physical/virtual network elements.
• Configuration Management (CM) Validation: Design and drive automated validation frameworks for CM engines to audit network configurations, track baseline drift, validate parameters (e.g., cell parameters, routing tables) and verify automated network provisioning rollbacks.
• Database & Network Topology Testing: Validate large-scale Graph databases (e.g., JanusGraph)utilized for real-time network topology mapping, complex entity relationship queries and crossdomain dependency modeling.
• Performance & Cache Validation: Performance-test and validate distributed Redis DB implementations, ensuring active data structures, eviction policies, session states and highfrequency pub/sub message queuing behave reliably under simulated peak telecom traffic loads.
• Test Automation Frameworks: Design, build and scale custom test automation frameworks from scratch using Java and/or Python leveraging industry-standard tools such as Selenium, Playwright, PyTest, TestNG and REST Assured.
• Observability & Streaming Validation: Validate cloud-native observability stacks (Prometheus,Grafana, OpenTelemetry) along with high-throughput distributed messaging and event data logs streams orchestrated via Apache Kafka clusters.
• AIOps & Closed-Loop Automation: Lead end-to-end quality validation initiatives for AI/ML-driven root cause analysis (RCA), predictive network analytics, anomaly detection algorithms and closedloop self-healing operational workflows.
• CI/CD/CT Quality Gates: Embed robust automated quality validation gates, automated continuous regression suites and infrastructure tests seamlessly into DevOps deployment pipelines via Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD/CT engines.

Required Technical Skills & Competencies:

OSS & Telecom Domain Expertise
• Comprehensive understanding of the FCAPS structural framework and modern Telecom Service Assurance principles.
• Hands-on validation experience covering Configuration Management (CM), Inventory Management (IM), Fault Management (FM) and Performance Management (PM) domains.
• Expertise in parsing network topology nodes, checking delta configurations and validating multivendor EMS/NMS integration points.

Database & Architectural Skills
• Strong querying and structural knowledge of Graph Databases along with graph query languages.
• Deep understanding of Redis DB core architecture, including data structures, replication, eviction policies, clustering and Pub/Sub functionality.
• Proven experience verifying log, search and transactional accuracy across distributed data backends including Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL and Cassandra.

Automation Engineering
• Advanced proficiency using Python or Java to design test libraries, custom keywords and objectoriented testing suites.
• Robust hands-on framework experience with programmatic API Testing Tools (REST Assured,Postman) and message brokers (Kafka).
• Solid architectural knowledge of containerized deployments utilizing Docker, Kubernetes orchestration and Helm charts.

Experience & Qualifications
• 5-10 years of direct, hands-on experience in Software Quality Engineering, with a heavy emphasis on Telecom OSS and Service Assurance systems.
• Proven background validating highly distributed distributed systems with demanding highavailability, real-time telemetry and complex data persistence requirements.
• Excellent analytical, root-cause isolation and communication skills to collaborate efficiently across multi-vendor technical domains.
• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Telecommunications Engineering, or a related technical engineering field.

Rakuten Shugi Principles: 

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. 
We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success. 

• Always improve, always advance. Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen. 

• Be passionately professional. Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best. 

• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika. Use the Rakuten Cycle to success in unknown territory. 

• Maximize Customer Satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction for workers in a service industry is to see their customers smile. 

• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! Always be conscious of time. Take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team.