QA Principal

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants anywhere in the world.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the organization-wide Quality Engineering strategy, operational framework, and enhancement roadmap.

• Evaluate Quality Engineering maturity across various domains and prioritize impactful enhancements.

• Establish and refine standards and guidelines for test architecture, coverage, quality evidence, testability, observability, release readiness, and production validation.

• Propel continuous enhancement of the end-to-end QA process and incorporate shift-left practices, quality controls, and risk-based gates throughout the SDLC.

• Oversee the strategic direction of the QA toolchain and automation architecture.

• Validate technical choices via code, prototypes, and architecture assessments for both UI and backend automation.

• Compare market practices and emerging technologies, including AI, and transform successful experiments into initiatives for change.

• Establish scalable release-quality principles and offer recommendations for systemic, cross-team, or ambiguous quality risks.

• Guide cross-team investigations and root-cause analyses for critical incidents, unstable environments, systemic automation failures, and quality issues.

• Set quality metrics and make trends, risks, technical debt, and improvement outcomes visible to engineering leadership.

• Cultivate QA Technical Leads as domain-level technical authorities.

• Persuade stakeholders and translate business, regulatory, and operational risks into engineering priorities.

• Collaborate with QA Technical Leads, Senior QA Engineers, Engineering Managers, Product, Architecture, and DevOps/SRE.

⛳️ Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in Quality Assurance / Quality Engineering, including technical leadership across multiple teams or domains.

• Proven experience in defining QA strategy, standards, or large-scale transformations with measurable outcomes.

• In-depth knowledge of Quality practices, risk-based testing, coverage strategy, shift-left methodologies, quality gates, testability, release readiness, and production quality signals.

• Strong hands-on programming skills with the capability to design and contribute to scalable UI and backend automation.

• Proficiency in Python preferred; substantial experience with Go, Node.js, or another relevant tech stack is also welcome.

• Extensive experience with distributed backend systems, REST APIs, event-driven workflows, and third-party integrations.

• Familiarity with CI/CD, Docker/Kubernetes, cloud-native or GitOps environments, and observability tools.

• Ability to define relevant quality metrics, communicate technical risks, and influence senior stakeholders effectively.

• Research-oriented mindset and practical experience in evaluating new technologies.

• Confident and responsible utilization of AI tools in daily engineering tasks.

• Proficient in spoken and written English and Russian.

• Nice to have: experience in fintech, crypto, payments, compliance, financial operations, or other regulated sectors.

• Nice to have: experience with Kafka, MQ, Debezium, ledger-like systems, eventual consistency, and event-driven architecture.

• Nice to have: experience with contract, performance, load, resilience, or reliability testing.

🏝️ Benefits

• Benefit Bar – up to €230/month.

• Fully remote work from nearly any location.

• Optional office access and relocation support.

• Flexible, async-friendly work environment.

• Budget allocated for courses, certifications, and professional development.

• Language learning assistance.

• Opportunities for cross-team learning and knowledge sharing.

• Medical insurance or reimbursement based on location.

• Access to mental health support.

• Financial assistance for significant life events.

• Merch shop featuring a rewards system.

• Team offsites and company events.