Senior QA Automation Engineer

About Private Identity

Private Identity (“PrivateID”) builds privacy-preserving identity and age-assurance technology - verification that confirms who someone is, or that they meet an age requirement, without storing the underlying personal data.

Our software runs in production at consumer scale for some of the largest companies in the world, and we hold ourselves to the quality bar this demands: Private Identity is ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and SOC 2 Type II certified, and a Kantara-certified NIST SP 800-63 credential service provider.

We’re a small, senior, international team, HQ in Washington DC, who work in the open, write things down, and ship software that works the first time.

The role

You’ll be a Private Identity engineer embedded three days a week with a large customer’s in-store platform team in Woonsocket, RI, and working from home the other two. You are our quality gate inside the account: the person who makes sure every build we ship lands cleanly, gets tested thoroughly, and arrives with the clear write-up that keeps both teams in sync.

The work is mostly quality automation. Builds come to you from our engineering leads - Ubuntu workstation software from the Linux team, the companion Android app from our mobile lead - and you take each one through a short, focused manual pass and then into the Playwright suites you own and extend. Manual testing is deliberately limited; writing and running automated tests is the heart of the job.

The rest is people. You’ll team closely with the customer’s engineers, learn how they use what we ship, and carry what you hear back to us early, in writing, with context. If you like small teams, bring your own structure, and enjoy being the trusted link between two engineering groups, you’ll do very well here.

Who you’ll work with

The customer’s team is small and you’ll know every one of them by name in your first week. You’ll be a daily presence in their space: pairing on reproductions, aligning on test coverage, and being the friendly, reliable face of Private Identity.

Our team is small too, and international: engineers across South America, India, Europe and the US. We run on clear written updates, focused calls, and a lot of mutual trust. Three days a week you’re the in-person face of that team; two days a week you’re doing the same, but online. Both halves matter, and both should feel natural to you.

What you’ll do

Test every build we ship  - the core of the role

• Receive new builds from our engineering leads - Ubuntu workstation software and the companion Android app - install them on the test hardware, and run a focused manual smoke pass: install and upgrade, first launch, the core flows, the camera and video paths.
• Write and run Playwright tests (TypeScript) that cover the UI and API surface of what we deliver, so every build gets the same repeatable coverage. This is where most of your time goes.
• Validate each release against requirements and acceptance criteria and give the team a clear, evidence-backed go / no-go before it reaches the customer.
• Triage failures, reproduce them, isolate root cause where you can, and write defect reports an engineer several time zones away can act on the moment they wake up.

Be the bridge between two small teams

• Work side by side with the customer’s engineering and QA team - align on test approach, coverage, standards and hand-off criteria, and become the person they come to first when something looks off.
• Keep the Private Identity team current from the customer site: what’s been tested, what’s outstanding, what’s at risk. Early, in writing, with enough context to act on.
• When the customer is working an operational issue in production, be part of the response - occasionally that means an early morning or a late evening, and it’s some of the most valued work you’ll do.

Own the automation framework & CI/CD  - the engineering behind the testing

• Design and maintain the Playwright-based UI and API automation framework (TypeScript/JavaScript), with Postman/Bruno or similar for exploratory API work.
• Wire regression and smoke suites into CI/CD (GitHub Actions) so quality checks are repeatable and visible to both teams, not one-off.
• Spot coverage gaps and close them; contribute to test strategy and quality-engineering practice in an Agile/Scrum cadence.

Bring the structure  - weighted equally with the testing

• Document issues, workflows and processes so someone who wasn’t in the room can follow them - defect reports, coverage maps, test plans, runbooks and process notes.
• Maintain a single, accurate picture of what’s been tested, what’s outstanding and what’s at risk - and share it before anyone has to ask.
• Run your corner of the engagement like a well-kept lab notebook: tidy backlog, clear priorities, nothing lost between hand-offs.

What you’ll need

• 4+ years in software QA/testing, including 3+ years hands-on building and running automated tests.
• Strong, current, hands-on Playwright skills - it’s the primary tool of this role.
• Solid API testing and automation - Playwright’s request layer, Postman/Bruno, or equivalent.
• Strong coding ability in TypeScript/JavaScript for building automated tests.
• Hands-on with AI-assisted testing tools (Claude Code, Playwright AI locators) to speed up script creation, refactoring and documentation.
• Experience integrating automated suites into CI/CD (GitHub Actions preferred).
• Comfortable at the Linux command line and on Android devices - installing builds, collecting logs, reproducing issues.
• A clear sense of what “ready to ship” means for a deliverable, and the judgment to say so - or not - with reasons.
• Excellent written communication and documentation habits. You naturally write things down, and people thank you for it.
• Social and collaborative. You enjoy sitting with a small engineering team, asking good questions, and building trust across an organizational boundary - and you can align two companies’ QA processes without friction.
• Highly structured and self-directed. You bring order to hand-offs, keep both teams’ picture of the work accurate without being asked, and are comfortable being the one who raises a hand.
• At home on a distributed, international team. Asynchronous, written-first collaboration across time zones is your normal, not an adjustment.
• Able to be on-site in Woonsocket, RI on Tue/Wed/Thu (roughly a 20-30 minute commute).

Nice to have

• Prior experience as a client-facing or embedded engineer or consultant.
• Svelte UI experience.
• FFmpeg and/or v4l2, or other video tooling experience.
• Exposure to regulated or enterprise domains - healthcare, pharmacy, retail, financial services or similar.
• Familiarity with  identity, authentication, biometrics or age-assurance systems.
• Exposure to performance, accessibility or security testing.