QA Lead

Position Summary We are looking for a seasoned Quality Engineering Lead to establish and own our quality assurance practice from the ground up. This role begins as an individual contributor with full ownership of the QA function and a clear mandate to build something lasting: a test strategy, an automation framework, a governed test case management platform, and ultimately a team. The ideal candidate is a hands-on practitioner who brings deep technical expertise in test automation for complex React-based web applications and RESTful APIs, paired with the organizational maturity to evaluate, select, and integrate tooling into an existing Atlassian engineering ecosystem. This is a foundational role with significant long-term growth opportunity into a Director capacity as the team scales. Key Responsibilities Test Case Management Platform • Lead a formal evaluation of test case management platforms (including but not limited to Zephyr Scale, Xray, TestRail, PractiTest, and qTest) with documented scoring criteria covering Atlassian integration depth, reporting capabilities, ease of adoption, licensing model, and scalability. • Present a platform recommendation with supporting rationale to engineering and product leadership, then own procurement, configuration, and rollout. • Establish integration between the selected platform and Jira, ensuring test cases link to epics, stories, and bugs with full traceability through the development lifecycle. • Define test case authoring standards, folder/module taxonomy, coverage tagging, and execution reporting conventions within the selected platform. • Maintain living test suites in the platform, ensuring coverage maps are updated as product scope evolves across releases. Test Automation • Design, implement, and maintain an end-to-end automated test suite for React-based web applications, covering critical user journeys, component-level interactions, and cross-browser compatibility. • Build and maintain API test automation targeting RESTful backend services, including positive/negative scenario coverage, schema validation, authentication flows, and contract testing where applicable. • Integrate automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines (Bitbucket Pipelines, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline, or equivalent), with clear pass/fail gates, artifact retention, and failure notification workflows. • Establish test environment management practices, including environment parity standards, data seeding strategies, and test isolation patterns to ensure reliable, repeatable test execution. • Implement and maintain visual regression testing where applicable, using tools such as Percy, Chromatic, or Playwright's snapshot capabilities. Quality Strategy & Process • Define and document a comprehensive QA strategy encompassing manual testing, exploratory testing, automated regression, performance testing, and accessibility compliance. • Collaborate with product managers and engineers during sprint planning and refinement to ensure testability is addressed at the design stage, including acceptance criteria review and definition of done alignment. • Own defect triage processes, severity classification standards, and bug lifecycle workflows within Jira, including reporting on defect escape rates and regression coverage trends. • Produce and maintain QA metrics dashboards surfacing test coverage, automation ROI, defect density, and release readiness signals for engineering and product leadership. • As the team grows, recruit, onboard, and mentor QA engineers, building a culture of quality ownership and continuous improvement. Required Qualifications • 7+ years of professional QA experience with at least 2 years in a lead, principal, or sole-practitioner capacity owning a QA function end to end. • Demonstrated experience evaluating, selecting, and implementing test case management platforms in a professional engineering environment. • Hands-on experience integrating QA tooling with the Atlassian stack (Jira, Confluence) at an administrative or configuration level, not just as an end user. • Expert-level proficiency with at least one modern end-to-end test automation framework targeting web UIs: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium WebDriver, or WebdriverIO. • Strong experience testing React-based single-page applications, including component interaction patterns, state-driven UI behavior, dynamic routing, and asynchronous rendering. • Solid API test automation experience using tools such as Postman/Newman, REST Assured, SuperTest, or Playwright's API testing capabilities, with familiarity with OpenAPI/Swagger specifications. • Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines with structured reporting, failure triage workflows, and trend analysis over time. • Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language used for test automation: JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Java, or C#. • Strong written communication skills with a track record of producing QA strategy documents, test plans, and platform evaluation reports for technical and non-technical audiences. Preferred Qualifications • Direct hands-on experience with Zephyr Scale (formerly Zephyr for Jira) or Xray, including configuration of test cycles, test plans, and Jira issue linking within those platforms. • Experience with contract testing frameworks such as Pact for validating consumer-provider API contracts in microservice or distributed system architectures. • Familiarity with performance and load testing tools such as k6, Locust, JMeter, or Gatling, with experience establishing baseline performance benchmarks. • Exposure to accessibility testing standards (WCAG 2.1 AA) and tooling such as Axe, Lighthouse, or Deque's accessibility suite. • Experience in healthcare software environments with understanding of PHI data handling requirements in test data management and environment governance. • Familiarity with AWS infrastructure relevant to test environments: ECS, RDS, S3, and CloudWatch for log-based failure analysis. • ISTQB Foundation or Advanced certification, or equivalent demonstrated QA methodology expertise. • Experience building QA practices in a startup or scale-up environment where process and tooling did not yet exist at time of hire. Technical Environment The QA Lead will work within and alongside the following stack: Product & Engineering Tooling • Jira (project management, backlog, and bug tracking), Confluence (documentation, runbooks, ADRs) • Bitbucket for source control; Bitbucket Pipelines or AWS CodePipeline for CI/CD Application Under Test • React (functional components, hooks, context, React Query / Redux), TypeScript • RESTful APIs built in PHP/Laravel and C++ • Edge devices written in C# Target Automation Stack • Playwright or Cypress for E2E and UI automation (TypeScript preferred) • Postman/Newman or Playwright API layer for REST API test automation • Percy, Chromatic, or Playwright snapshots for visual regression • k6 or Locust for load and performance testing baselines Test Case Management Candidates (to be evaluated and selected) • Zephyr Scale, Xray, TestRail, PractiTest, qTest — finalist selection and integration owned by this role What We Offer • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits with employer contributions. • Remote-first culture with a collaborative and technically engaged engineering team. • Full autonomy to shape the QA practice, select tooling, and define the function — your fingerprints will be on everything. • A clear path to Quality Director as the team scales, with leadership support for that transition.