Quality Engineering Lead

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in South Africa.

📋 Description

• Shift quality to the left effectively. Assist teams in identifying defects at the most cost-effective stage: during refinement and task definition, before any code is written. Participate in story-writing and design discussions, raise questions that uncover ambiguities and edge cases early, and guide teams in incorporating testability and clear acceptance criteria from the outset.

• Elevate the entire testing pyramid. Collaborate with developers across all levels, from unit and integration tests to end-to-end and system testing. Assist them in creating tests that are rapid, deterministic, and reliable; rebalance suites that are either top-heavy or unreliable; and clarify what should be tested at each level, along with the rationale.

• Optimize pipelines for speed and cost. Treat CI as a product. Analyze and enhance pipeline definitions, eliminate unnecessary compute, sensibly parallelize and shard test execution, and reduce feedback loops so teams receive a reliable signal in minutes rather than hours. Help them understand the actual time and cost incurred by their pipelines, and work to reduce both.

• Integrate AI into the quality toolkit. Assist teams in deriving real value from AI-assisted development: generating and maintaining tests, speeding up code reviews, and shortening feedback loops, all while maintaining a critical perspective on the output of these tools to ensure quality and trust remain intact. You advocate for these tools and demonstrate effective usage to teams.

• Mentor and empower. This is the core of the role. Work alongside engineers, conduct workshops, review test code and pipeline modifications, and leave teams with a higher quality standard even after your departure. Success is measured by how much the team improves, not by your individual output.

• Own the quality strategy throughout the SDLC. Evaluate the current standing of a team or program, agree on a practical plan for enhancement, and drive that plan to completion: encompassing test strategy, environments and test data, release confidence, and the metrics that indicate whether quality is progressing in the right direction.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive, hands-on quality experience throughout the entire testing pyramid, from unit tests to end-to-end and system testing, with well-founded opinions on the appropriate practices for each level.

• A solid engineering understanding of code. You are comfortable reading and writing code, evaluating pull requests on their merits, and gaining the respect of senior developers through effective communication.

• Genuine expertise in Agile delivery and a practical understanding of what shift-left entails: influencing quality during the definition and design phases, not just during testing.

• Strong CI knowledge. You can dissect a pipeline, identify inefficiencies, and enhance its speed, cost-effectiveness, and reliability. Familiarity with various tools across clients is important; understanding the principles is key, and experience with tools such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or CircleCI is preferred.

• Proficiency across the testing toolbox, regardless of the stack. We adopt a tool-agnostic approach and value transferable skills over specific tools. For context: Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium for end-to-end testing; Jest, Vitest, JUnit, or pytest for unit and integration tests; k6, JMeter, or Gatling for performance testing.

• A positive attitude towards AI, supported by practical experience. You leverage AI-assisted development tools in your own work, recognize their benefits and drawbacks, and can guide a team in their adoption without compromising quality.

• Exceptional mentoring and communication abilities. You can teach, influence, and change a team's practices without formal authority, engaging effectively with both client stakeholders and engineers.

• The seniority to integrate into a new team, quickly assess their quality standing, and build trust rapidly.

🏝️ Benefits

• Collaborate with global teams and enterprise clients.

• Enjoy a collaborative culture that encourages growth.

• Access to opportunities for learning and working with modern supply chain technologies.