Senior/ Lead Hybrid QA Engineer (Manual, Automation)

Key Responsibilities:

Accountability for assigned project / product quality 

Quality Ownership & Strategy

• Own end-to-end product quality from development through production for a growing HR-focused organization.
• Establish and champion a quality-first mindset across all teams, ensuring developers and QAs share accountability for quality outcomes.
• Define and refine quality strategies, test plans, and quality gates for major releases and project milestones.
• Review test coverage and quality across unit, backend, database, API, and UI layers, ensuring adherence to the Test Pyramid and best practices.
• Lead defect management, including triage, root cause analysis, and risk assessment, recommending mitigation strategies before deployment.

Testing Planning & Execution

• Design and implement functional testing strategies spanning pre-release, post-deployment, and production environments.
• Develop, review, and maintain test scenarios and cases aligned with business requirements and user workflows.
• Oversee regression, integration, and end-to-end testing cycles to assure system-wide quality and stability.
• Collaborate with developers and product managers to identify risks early and validate features effectively.
• Maintain clear test documentation, results, and QA reports to ensure visibility and traceability.
• Coordinate with stakeholders to define acceptance criteria and ensure alignment between business goals and testing outcomes.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Partner with engineering, product, and DevOps to maintain a unified quality vision across SDLC stages.
• Mentor QA engineers and developers on effective test design, automation strategy, and risk-based testing.
• Act as a quality advocate, promoting proactive testing practices, continuous improvement, and shared quality ownership.

Production Stability & Observability (Optional)

• Plan and execute stability testing, including resilience, failover, and rollback scenarios.
• Collaborate with SRE and DevOps to validate releases under production-like conditions.
• Define and implement monitoring and observability strategies using AWS tools or third-party platforms (e.g., Datadog, CloudWatch).

Requirements

Qualifications

Mandatory Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in software testing, with strong hands-on expertise in both manual and automation testing (E2E, API).
• Proven quality ownership with transparent QA deliverables such as test strategy, plan, and release quality reports.
• Strong ability to review and guide unit test, integration test quality and ensure overall test completeness across layers.
• Hands-on experience in test case design, execution, and bug reporting.
• Experience working in Agile (Scrum/Kanban) environments.
• Excellent analytical, documentation, and communication skills.
• Intermediate to advanced proficiency with test automation frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Postman, REST Assured).
• Strong understanding of API testing, scripting languages, and integration validation.
• Proven leadership mindset with cross-country collaboration experience.
• Familiarity with test management tools (e.g., TestRail, Zephyr) and version control systems (e.g., Git).

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience testing cloud-based applications (AWS, Azure).
• Knowledge of back-office or HR domain products.
• Exposure to performance or security testing (e.g., JMeter, K6).
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).
• ISTQB Foundation certification.
• 2-3+ years of people management experience 

Soft Skills

• Strong communication and collaboration skills across functions and geographies.
• Positive, proactive, and problem-solving mindset.
• Commitment to fostering a shared ownership of quality within the team.