The Unified Data Streams (UDS) team at New Relic has implemented a critical step towards improving the reliability of their testing practices by hiring a software development engineer in test (SDET) to join the team. The SDET's mission was to set up an integration test environment and build a functional test framework that covers various aspects of the streaming services platform, including API endpoints, data handling, and deployment processes. With this new framework, the UDS team has seen benefits such as reduced time for game days, improved confidence in software quality, faster delivery of features to customers, and increased reliability. The SDET's work has also enabled the team to track their functional tests and deployments more efficiently, with a built-in Slack integration providing real-time updates on deployments.