Software Development Engineer in Test Contractor (SDET Contractor)

Why Sony Interactive Entertainment? Sony Interactive Entertainment isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is the company behind the PlayStation brand. As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation, we’re part of a proud legacy of innovation and excellence. SIE is a dynamic technology company, delivering cutting-edge hardware and network services to more than 100 million people and an entertainment leader, home to some of the most beloved and recognizable intellectual properties (IP) in the world. Our role at SIE is to create and nurture the experiences under the PlayStation brand, a name synonymous with entertainment excellence and creativity. SDET (Contractor) Responsibilities: We are looking for a highly skilled Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to design, develop, and maintain automated test frameworks for backend services and APIs. The ideal candidate is a strong Java engineer with deep testing expertise, capable of working closely with developers, product owners, and scrum teams to ensure high-quality delivery of complex services and integrations. This role involves building robust automation, validating API contracts and flows, working with microservice-based systems, and contributing to continuous integration and quality strategies. What You’ll Do Design, develop, and maintain automated test frameworks and backend test suites using Java. Write high-quality JUnit tests for RESTful APIs, service layers, and backend components. Validate API schemas, request/response structures, and error-handling scenarios. Create and execute API automation covering functional, regression, and integration layers. Collaborate with developers to ensure testability, observability, and quality in new feature design. Analyze logs, metrics, and service behavior to diagnose and troubleshoot failures. Participate in Agile processes: refinement, planning, retrospectives, and daily scrums. Drive improvements in CI/CD pipelines through automation and quality gates. Contribute to scaling QE across microservices by building reusable test components and libraries. Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field—or equivalent practical experience. 3+ years of experience in software QE, test automation, or development roles. Demonstrated ability to work independently as well as part of a collaborative Scrum team Interest in working as part of an agile, collaborative and cross-functional team that works on modern software design and development Exposure to version control systems (preferably Git) Excellent verbal and written communication skills Strong analytical and problem-solving skills Required Skills: Strong experience with Java programming (advanced OOP concepts, collections, generics, lambdas). Hands-on experience writing tests with JUnit (JUnit5 preferred). Expertise in API testing for REST-based services (familiarity with gRPC is a plus). Solid understanding of API schema validation, including OpenAPI/Swagger specifications. Experience building and maintaining automation frameworks for backend or microservice architectures. Familiarity with Git, branching strategies, and CI/CD tools (e.g. Jenkins, GitHub Actions). Strong problem-solving and debugging skills. Including analyzing logs and diagnosing service failures. . Preferred Skills (Good to Have): Experience designing test plans, writing detailed test scenarios, and performing domain-driven test analysis. Familiarity with Spring Boot–based micro services and common backend service patterns. Experience using IntelliJ IDEA or similar Java-focused development environments. Hands-on experience with log analysis and observability tools (Splunk preferred). Understanding of gRPC service testing and related tooling. Familiarity with cloud environments (AWS). Exposure to writing scripts using Python or Node.js Exposure to a web-front-end technology such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS At SIE, work…