Introduction
Over the past few years, we’ve been steadily expanding our test automation capabilities at Sinara—not as a silver bullet, but as a strategic tool for maintaining dependable software delivery for our clients in ever more fast-paced trading and post-trade environments. Automated testing is woven into our development process across multiple projects, with robust regression test packs to help catch unintended side effects early. We use Playwright for fast, reliable end-to-end testing of UI workflows, Artillery for performance testing under realistic loads, and Xray to manage and track our test cases across both automated and manual test cycles.
In this post, we’ll take a quick look across automated testing in the trading space, including its impacts, and indeed its limitations.
Faster Delivery Through Automation
One of the clearest benefits of test automation is the ability to allow for consistently shorter delivery timescales without sacrificing quality. Automated regression test packs can be run in minutes or hours rather than days, allowing our engineers to receive faster feedback and fix issues early—before they snowball into more complicated problems. This alone can save significant time later in the release cycle, when last-minute bugs are hardest to deal with.
Automation also helps reduce bottlenecks during QA phases. Instead of waiting for manual testers to step through every workflow, we can automatically verify key behaviours across multiple browsers, devices, or environments at the push of a button. That frees up our test analysts to focus on exploratory testing and edge cases—areas where they can add real value.
When automation is used well, it enables a tighter, more continuous release rhythm. We can run nightly builds, validate releases earlier, and keep the momentum going from development through to production. That’s particularly important in trading environments, where release windows are short and pressure to deliver new functionality is high.
Integration with CI/CD in the Cloud
We’re also integrating test automation tightly with our CI/CD pipelines and taking advantage of cloud infrastructure to create flexible, ‘production-like’ test environments on demand. As part of our deployment process, we can automatically spin up a virtual machine that mirrors the production environment, deploy the latest software build, execute the full suite of automated tests, and then tear it all down—all within a controlled, repeatable pipeline.
This allows us to test every change as if it were already live, which gives us faster feedback, as well as more realistic validation and higher confidence in each release. It avoids the pitfalls of shared environments and “it works on my machine” type problems. When a test passes in our pipeline, we know it’s valid against the exact stack and configuration our clients will be using.
In trading contexts—where uptime, reliability and latency really matter—this kind of precision can make all the difference. Automated infrastructure in the cloud means we can scale up testing when needed, run workloads in parallel, and maintain clean environments for every run.
The Limits of Automation
It’s important to be clear about what test automation can and can’t do. Automated regression packs are designed to prove that existing functionality still works as expected—that there has not been a regression. What they won’t do is find bugs in new features or highlight problems in the design or logic of freshly written code.
That’s where skilled test analysts have to step in again. They understand the business context, anticipate the unexpected, and can interpret the intent behind a requirement—not just whether it passes a script. Especially in the trading space, where workflows are nuanced and edge cases abound, human insight is irreplaceable.
Keeping Tests Relevant and Useful
Another key point: automated tests are only valuable if they’re maintained. Outdated or brittle tests can become an expensive burden. That’s why we treat our test suites as live artefacts, evolving alongside the codebase. When we change the system, our analysts update the tests. When functionality becomes obsolete, so do the tests covering it.
We also know not everything is worth automating. Some tests don’t justify the overhead. Others are too volatile, or too specific to a one-off scenario. Our team makes deliberate decisions about where automation delivers the most value—and where it’s better to keep things manual.
Designing for Testability
A final but crucial point: test automation doesn’t just happen. It needs to be built into the design. We structure Sinara systems with testability in mind—using modular architectures, clean interfaces, and consistent environments so that test automation is feasible in the first place. This approach really pays off when increasing our test coverage or onboarding new QA team members.
Our Approach
At Sinara, we’re not chasing 100% test automation. We’re building a sustainable approach: adding automation where it adds value, with the insight of expert test analysts where it doesn’t. It’s this balance that helps us continue to deliver reliable software for fast-moving, high-stakes trading environments.
