Lead QA Engineer (Automation-Focused)
About the Role
We are looking for a Lead QA Engineer with deep automation expertise to own and advance the quality strategy for our custom-built back-office platform that spans all phases of the mortgage lifecycle. You will design end-to-end automation across web UI, API, and data layers, embed testing into our CI/CD pipelines, and act as the technical authority on test quality. Automation is the core of the role, but not the whole of it: you will also perform exploratory and manual testing where automation does not yet reach, and help cover quality gaps wherever they appear.
What You Will Do
- Design, build, and own end-to-end automated test suites and the framework behind them (page objects, fixtures, deterministic seed/cleanup, reusable helpers) for our web application using Playwright (TypeScript).
- Develop API-level and integration tests that validate business rules, the deal lifecycle, document workflows, and reporting outputs.
- Integrate automated suites into our CI/CD pipelines (Bitbucket Pipelines) so tests run reliably on every pull request and deployment.
- Define the test strategy across the pyramid and partner with engineers on PHPUnit coverage so unit, integration, and E2E layers complement each other.
- Diagnose and fix flaky tests and environment failures through root-cause analysis, and perform exploratory and manual testing where automation does not yet reach.
- Use AI-assisted tools to accelerate test authoring, data generation, and failure triage, while critically reviewing everything they produce.
- Mentor developers and junior QA on writing maintainable tests, and contribute to release readiness, quality gates, and regression planning.
What You Bring
Required
- 5+ years in software quality engineering, with a strong focus on test automation balanced by solid manual and exploratory testing skills.
- Deep, hands-on expertise with a modern E2E automation framework (Playwright strongly preferred; Cypress, Selenium, or WebdriverIO transfers) and strong TypeScript or JavaScript.
- Proven experience designing automation frameworks from the ground up, not just authoring tests inside someone else's framework.
- Solid REST API testing and strong SQL skills for validating behaviour directly against a relational database (MySQL preferred).
- Hands-on experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (Bitbucket Pipelines, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar).
- Enough infrastructure and architecture experience to be self-sufficient: you stand up and maintain your own test environments, runners, and pipelines without depending on DevOps or developers.
- Hands-on experience using AI tools (for example GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude) in day-to-day engineering work, with sound judgment about where their output must be verified.
- A pragmatic, evidence-first attitude: automation-led, but willing to roll up your sleeves for manual testing to keep quality moving, and you do not declare something fixed until you have proven it.
Preferred / Nice to Have
- Experience testing PHP applications, ideally CakePHP, and familiarity with PHPUnit.
- Experience in fintech, lending, mortgage, banking, or another regulated, financially sensitive domain.
- Familiarity with role-based access control (RBAC) and permission testing.
- Experience testing document-heavy or workflow-driven systems (PDF artifacts, file storage on cloud infrastructure such as AWS).
What Success Looks Like
- A stable, fast, trustworthy automated regression suite that engineers rely on for every release, with flaky tests the rare exception.
- Quality signals visible in CI on every pull request, with clear gates that prevent regressions from reaching production.
- The wider team writes better tests because of the patterns, tooling, and mentorship you provide.
Pay: $110,000.00-$120,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Flexible schedule
- Paid time off
- Vision care
- Work from home
Work Location: Remote
