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