Lead QA Automation Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Test Automation Ownership
• Own, maintain, and improve automated testing pipelines for our media websites and mobile applications.
• Build, update, and maintain automated tests using Playwright or similar browser automation frameworks.
• Improve test reliability, reduce flaky tests, and optimize automated test execution time.
• Maintain and improve CI test workflows using GitHub Actions.
• Expand automated coverage for critical user flows, regression areas, and high-risk product functionality.
• Establish standards for how automated tests are written, reviewed, organized, and maintained.
• Work with Engineering to ensure applications are testable and automation-friendly.
• Investigate failed test runs, identify root causes, and coordinate fixes with Engineering when needed.
• QA Process and Strategy
• Define and improve QA processes across web and mobile products.
• Collaborate with Engineering leads on release quality standards, defect triage, regression planning, and QA workflow.
• Determine the appropriate balance between automated testing, manual testing, exploratory testing, and smoke testing.
• Create practical QA guidelines for feature validation, regression testing, release readiness, and production verification.
• Improve visibility into product quality through test reporting, defect trends, and release risk communication.
• Help establish useful quality gates that improve confidence without unnecessarily slowing down delivery.
• Manual QA Leadership
• Manage, support, and mentor the existing manual QA tester.
• Plan and coordinate manual QA work across active development, regression cycles, and releases.
• Ensure manual test cases are well organized, current, and mapped to meaningful product coverage.
• Use Testiny to manage test cases, test runs, QA documentation, and regression coverage.
• Create a QA operating model that works for a small team now and can scale over time.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Work closely with Engineering, Product, Design, and other stakeholders to understand requirements, risks, and acceptance criteria.
• Participate in sprint planning, feature reviews, bug triage, and release planning.
• Communicate quality risks clearly and proactively.
• Help identify gaps in requirements, edge cases, and user experience issues before release.
• Advocate for quality while balancing speed, pragmatism, and business priorities.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional QA experience, including hands-on experience testing web applications.
• 3+ years of experience building and maintaining automated test suites for production applications.
• 2+ years of experience with modern browser automation frameworks such as Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium. Playwright experience is strongly preferred.
• 1+ year of experience leading QA work, mentoring QA testers, managing QA execution, or owning QA process across a product or engineering team.
• Experience writing or maintaining automated tests in JavaScript or TypeScript.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, preferably using GitHub Actions.
• Experience with test case management tools such as Testiny, TestRail, Zephyr, or similar.
• Experience with cross-browser and cross-device testing tools such as Sauce Labs, BrowserStack, or similar.
• Strong understanding of regression testing, smoke testing, exploratory testing, release validation, and defect lifecycle management.
• Ability to troubleshoot failed automated tests and distinguish between test issues, environment issues, and application defects.
• Experience collaborating directly with Engineering, Product, and Design teams.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to clearly explain QA risks, test coverage gaps, and release concerns.
• Ability to operate independently and bring structure to a QA function that is still growing.