Senior Integration and Testing Lead

Company Overview

By Light Professional IT Services LLC readies warfighters and federal agencies with technology and systems engineered to connect, protect, and prepare individuals and teams for whatever comes next. Headquartered in McLean, VA, By Light supports defense, civilian, and commercial IT customers worldwide.

Cole Engineering Services (CESI), a By Light company, is recognized as a premier provider of modeling and simulation (M&S) training solutions to the Federal Government and industry. Since 2004, CESI has been at the forefront of developing, maintaining, and integrating simulation-based training, serious gaming, technical services, training and other support in live, virtual, constructive, and gaming (LVCG) domains. CESI also designs, builds and runs infrastructure, platforms, applications and processes that enable cyber training for the integrated multi-domain force.

Our vision is to become a worldwide full spectrum LVCG and cyber training/analysis developer, integrator and services provider.

This position is for the NCRC Range Modernization (RM), The Senior Integration and Testing Lead is a critical leadership role responsible for architecting, governing, and executing the end-to-end testing and system integration lifecycle for highly complex, secure, and mission-critical software and hardware systems. Given the secure nature of the work, this position requires the candidate to be fully on-site five days a week in a cleared facility.

The ideal candidate will bridge the gap between development, operations, and quality assurance by championing modern software evelopment life cycles (SDLC). You will be expected to heavily leverage Agile methodologies (including both Scrum and Kanban frameworks) to drive continuous delivery. As the Lead, you will design robust automated testing architectures within Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, ensuring that all integrated components perform flawlessly, securely, and meet rigorous technical specifications before deployment to production environments.

Must be willing and able to work 100% on-site at the designated facility five (5) days a week. Remote or hybrid work is not available for this position due to the classification level of the projects.

Integration & Test Architecture

• Strategic Test Planning:
  Design, implement, and continuously evolve overarching integration and testing strategies that validate complex, multi-tiered architectures (including microservices, legacy integrations, and cloud-native components).
• Pipeline Automation (CI/CD):
  Architect and maintain automated testing gates within established CI/CD pipelines. Ensure that code commits trigger appropriate unit, integration, and security tests automatically, halting deployments when quality thresholds are not met.
• System-of-Systems Integration:
  Lead the technical integration of disparate subsystems, ensuring seamless data flow, API contract adherence (REST/gRPC/SOAP), and robust error handling across boundaries in high-security environments.

Agile & Methodological Leadership

• Agile Champion:
  Act as the primary advocate for QA integration within Agile frameworks. Ensure testing is not a bottleneck, but a continuous process embedded within the sprint lifecycle.
• Scrum & Kanban Execution:
  Actively participate in and occasionally lead Scrum events (Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Retrospectives). Utilize Kanban boards to manage testing workflows, visualize work-in-progress (WIP) limits for the QA team, and rapidly triage incoming defects to ensure continuous flow.
• Continuous Improvement:
  Monitor team velocity and defect escape rates, using these metrics to iteratively refine the testing processes and adapt Agile workflows to better suit the project's unique constraints.

Team Leadership & Quality Governance

• Mentorship & Management:
  Directly manage, mentor, and evaluate a cross-functional team of QA automation engineers, integration specialists, and manual testers. Provide technical guidance on complex debugging and script development.
• Defect Lifecycle Management:
  Oversee the defect tracking ecosystem (e.g., Jira, Azure Dev Ops). Facilitate root-cause analysis (RCA) sessions for critical production escapes, ensuring that systemic issues are addressed at the architectural level.
• Compliance & Security:
  Ensure all testing protocols comply with rigorous federal, defense, or internal security standards necessary for TS/SCI level projects.