QA Automation Engineer

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a QA Automation Engineer based in the United States. This is a foundational QA leadership opportunity for an engineer who wants to build an automated testing practice from the ground up. You will own the quality strategy across modern web applications and existing Word Press environments.

The role combines automation engineering, test architecture, CI/CD integration, performance testing, and quality leadership. You will establish testing standards, release gates, test data strategies, and measurable quality metrics across the development lifecycle. Working closely with engineering leadership and developers, you will influence how teams build, test, troubleshoot, and release software. The position offers significant autonomy, with the opportunity to introduce scalable tooling, workflows, and AI‑assisted QA practices.

Success will mean creating a reliable, automation‑first quality culture that reduces risk and enables faster, more confident releases.

• Own and establish the end‑to‑end QA strategy, including the test pyramid, coverage targets, release gates, quality standards, and ownership expectations across web applications built with JavaScript/Type Script and existing Word Press platforms.
• Design, build, and maintain automated testing suites, including end‑to‑end and UI automation with Playwright or a comparable framework, as well as integration and API testing for critical workflows.
• Integrate automated testing into Git‑based CI/CD workflows, including fast pull‑request smoke tests, scheduled regression suites, release validation, reporting, and diagnostic artifacts such as screenshots, traces, videos, and logs.
• Establish a reliable test data and environment strategy covering fixtures, data seeding, mocks versus real services, stable test accounts, parallel execution, and approaches to minimizing test flakiness.
• Develop performance and load‑testing capabilities using tools such as k6, Artillery, or JMeter, establish performance baselines, and collaborate with engineering teams to identify bottlenecks across frontend, APIs, databases, and infrastructure.
• Define and champion a quality‑ownership model across engineering teams, coach developers on testable code, and promote collaborative approaches such as QA‑buddy practices.
• Introduce automation‑first workflows that reduce manual QA effort, including test triggers, reporting, defect routing, release‑readiness signals, and workflow automations using n8n or comparable tools.
• Conduct targeted exploratory and manual testing when appropriate, particularly for UX validation and edge cases, and provide clear risk assessments and go/no‑go recommendations.
• Establish and monitor meaningful quality metrics, including test pass rates, execution time, flake rates, escaped defects, and regression effectiveness.
• Partner with engineering leadership and development teams to diagnose failures, improve testability, prioritize high‑risk user journeys, and continuously raise quality standards across the software development lifecycle.
• Deliver foundational QA capabilities within the first 60–90 days, including a documented strategy, stable automated suites, reliable CI diagnostics, a workable test data approach, initial performance baselines, and automation workflows that reduce operational overhead.

• 5+ years of professional QA and test automation experience focused on modern web applications, with demonstrated ownership, leadership, or lead‑level responsibility.
• Strong hands‑on experience with Playwright or an equivalent end‑to‑end testing framework.
• Proficiency in JavaScript or Type Script sufficient to develop and maintain automation frameworks, helpers, fixtures, and CI integrations.
• Strong understanding of frontend technologies and browser behavior, including DOM and network debugging, authentication and session flows, caching, and reliable selector strategies.
• Working knowledge of backend concepts, including REST APIs, request/response debugging, and databases for test setup and validation.
• Practical experience with API…