Lead QA Engineer

Job Purpose

We are seeking an experienced Lead Quality Engineer to join our Atlanta-based engineering organization. In this role, you will assume end-to-end responsibility for the functional quality of core business applications, spanning test strategy, automation, manual and exploratory testing, defect management, and quality reporting.

This position sits at the forefront of how our organization applies artificial intelligence to software quality. You will use AI tooling throughout the entire QA workflow, from requirements analysis through test authoring, coverage gap analysis, automation, execution, and reporting. We are looking for an engineer who treats AI as a core part of the craft rather than an occasional convenience, and who can establish those practices for others to follow.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role that does not require people management. However, as a lead, you will mentor fellow quality engineers, raising the technical capability of the team and helping colleagues build fluency in both modern test automation and AI-assisted engineering.

Responsibilities

• End-to-End Functional Test Ownership
  • Assume full accountability for functional test coverage of assigned applications, including the user interface, service layers, and integration points.
  • Be hands-on across the full stack for assigned applications, including manual and exploratory testing, automation, and end-to-end integration testing.
  • Define and maintain the application's test strategy, determining what is tested, at which layer, and at what cadence.
  • Act as the quality authority for the application, providing evidence-based release readiness assessments to engineering and product leadership.
• AI-Enabled Quality Workflow
  • Evaluate user stories, acceptance criteria, and design documentation to surface ambiguities, missing edge cases, and untestable requirements prior to development.
  • Generate candidate test cases and scenarios from requirements, then apply engineering judgment to refine, consolidate, and prioritize them.
  • Compare the implemented codebase against the existing test suite to identify uncovered paths, ineffective assertions, and divergence between specified and actual behavior.
  • Assess each test for automation suitability based on stability, execution frequency, maintenance cost, and exploratory value, and make defensible recommendations on automated versus manual execution.
  • Build and maintain Playwright automation, using AI tooling to accelerate authoring, refactoring, debugging, and long-term maintenance.
  • Operate automated suites within CI/CD pipelines and conduct manual and exploratory testing where automation is not the appropriate instrument.
  • Triage, reproduce, document, and drive defects to resolution, using AI-assisted analysis to shorten root-cause isolation.
  • Produce clear, decision-ready reporting on coverage, execution results, defect trends, and release risk.
• Test Framework Development
  • Contribute substantively to the organization's existing QA automation framework, extending its capability, improving stability, and strengthening maintainability.
  • Design and implement a test automation framework from first principles when required, including architecture, page and component abstractions, fixtures, test data management, environment configuration, CI integration, and reporting.
  • Establish and enforce automation standards and design patterns that keep test suites fast, reliable, and readable.
• Technical Leadership and Mentoring
  • Mentor quality engineers on test design, automation architecture, and the effective and responsible use of AI tooling.
  • Lead by example through code review, pairing, and hands-on guidance; identify skill gaps within the team and create opportunities for colleagues to close them.
  • Serve as a resource for the broader engineering organization on quality practices and AI-assisted testing methods.
  • Partner with software engineers, product managers, and DevOps to shift quality activities earlier in the delivery cycle.

Knowledge and Experience

• 7+ years of professional experience in software quality engineering, including substantial hands-on test automation work.
• Demonstrated depth with Playwright, extending beyond test authoring to suite architecture, flakiness mitigation, test data strategy, and execution at scale within CI.
• Practical, applied experience using AI-assisted engineering tooling as part of a routine development or testing workflow - for example, AI coding agents, AI-assisted test authoring, or AI-supported code and requirements analysis.
• Strong foundation in functional testing, including test design techniques, risk-based prioritization, boundary and negative testing, and structured exploratory testing.
• Proven experience building a test automation framework from the ground up, with the ability to articulate the architectural decisions involved.
• Proficiency in TypeScript or JavaScript, or comparable programming experience with the ability to become productive quickly.
• Experience owning both automated and manual testing for an application, with sound judgment regarding the appropriate application of each.
• Working knowledge of defect and test management tooling such as Jira, Xray, or equivalent.
• Experience integrating automated test execution into CI/CD pipelines.
• Prior experience mentoring or leading other engineers.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; test plans, defect reports, and quality summaries must stand on their own without narration.

Preferred Knowledge and Experience

• Hands-on experience with Claude Code or a comparable AI coding agent.
• Experience creating AI agent skills and custom agents, and using Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, including building MCP servers when existing tooling is not sufficient
• API test automation experience across REST or GraphQL, including contract testing.
• Experience introducing AI tooling to a quality organization and establishing team-wide standards for its use.
• Background in a regulated or high-reliability domain.