QA Lead, Quality Assurance - QA​/QC, IT QA Tester ​/ Automation

Location: Remote-first (2 days/month in Birmingham office)

At Data & AI Literacy Academy we believe that data literacy is for everyone. We’re not just delivering courses; we’re transforming how people think about and engage with data, building confident, capable teams in every sector. As a fast-growing EdTech company, our mission is to make data accessible, relatable and actionable across all roles. We design and deliver dynamic, role-specific programmes that empower individuals to use data meaningfully in their everyday decisions.

As a Quality Assurance Lead, you'll be responsible for ensuring software quality across the product lifecycle. Sitting across both product and engineering, you'll construct and execute test plans, support engineers in identifying edge cases and designing robust test suites, and provide first-line triage when issues are reported. You'll bring structure and consistency to how we test, document and communicate quality, with a strong emphasis on building towards automation wherever possible.

This is a rare opportunity to be the founding QA hire and build the quality function from the ground up. It's a great fit for someone who wants to:

• Own QA end-to-end as our first dedicated quality hire. Set the strategy, the standards and the tooling, then grow the function as the company scales
• Establish testing practices and a culture of quality across an engineering org
• Build and eventually lead a QA team, hiring and mentoring as the function matures
• Work as a peer to Engineering and Product leadership, influencing how features are built and how quality is measured
• Build and expand test automation to improve speed, coverage and confidence in releases
• Have a direct, visible impact on the reliability of the product our users depend on

You’ll be defining what "good" looks like here, not inheriting someone else's playbook.

• Define the QA strategy for the organisation from scratch: the framework, methodologies and standards that will form the foundation of quality practice across engineering
• Select and implement the testing and automation tooling the team will build on
• Work with Engineering and Product leads to define QA processes that enable rapid change without sacrificing quality
• Build a culture of quality by embedding quality thinking into every stage of the development lifecycle, from sprint planning through to release

• Lay the groundwork for a QA team: define the roles, ways of working and hiring bar as the function grows
• Mentor engineers on testing practices and, over time, hire and lead QA team members
• Act as the organisation's authority on quality, the person others look to for direction on testing approach and risk

• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to translate requirements into structured, comprehensive test plans
• Identify risks, assumptions and dependencies early in the development cycle
• Define clear acceptance criteria and test coverage goals for each feature or release

• Run test plans across manual and automated workflows
• Document results in a standardised format that gives the team consistent, actionable visibility into quality
• Own the reporting cadence and flag trends, recurring issues or gaps in coverage

• Partner with developers to surface boundary conditions, failure modes and unexpected user behaviours
• Drive the design of test suites that go well beyond the happy path, with a focus on automating repeatable tests
• Champion a quality-first mindset across the team

• Act as the initial point of contact for software issues reported by internal stakeholders or end users
• Reproduce bugs, assess severity and gather the context engineers need to resolve them quickly
• Route and elevate issues appropriately, keeping reporters informed throughout

• Proven experience as a first or early QA hire, having built a quality function from the ground up: defining processes, selecting tooling and establishing standards where none existed
• Experienc…