Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Specialist / App Tester at Ardent Principles, Inc.
Herndon, VA
$130,000–$260,000
Jul 26, 2026
Herndon, VA
Jul 27, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A full-time, onsite QA role focused on building and maintaining automated test frameworks in Java using tools like Selenium WebDriver and JMeter, rather than relying on record-and-playback approaches. The position involves writing test plans, validating data across Oracle, Postgres, and MySQL databases, probing for vulnerabilities, and working within a Linux environment. An active TS/SCI with Full Scope Polygraph clearance is required.
Senior level · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
Pay in the description: $130,000–$260,000
Quick apply — this platform usually takes a CV and a few fields.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $129,128 (middle half $101,596–$152,655). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 29, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
An active TS/SCI with Full Scope Polygraph is an explicit hard gate — candidates without it will not be considered.
The role is fully onsite in Herndon, VA; no remote or hybrid option is mentioned.
The compensation range ($130,000–$260,000/year) is unusually wide, likely reflecting varying levels of experience or clearance tier within the cleared-contractor market.
No minimum years of experience or degree requirement is stated anywhere in the posting.
JMeter is listed alongside Selenium in the closing 'solid hands-on experience' sentence using 'and/or'; both are named tools in the same requirement, so JMeter is captured as the primary with Selenium as an alternative for that specific testing-tools requirement (Selenium WebDriver is separately captured as its own hard gate from the earlier explicit requirement).
The IDE requirement names IntelliJ, Eclipse, and NetBeans as interchangeable examples; IntelliJ is used as the primary with the others in alternatives.
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.