Build a QA function from scratch for a small engineering team at a US-based SaaS platform. Implement quality gates, test strategies, and bug management processes to raise quality without slowing development. Requires 5+ years in QA with experience building QA functions and strong testing skills.
Key Highlights
Key Responsibilities
Technical Skills Required
Benefits & Perks
Nice to Have
Job Description
Senior QA Engineer
đź“Ť Remote (Europe-based) | Freelance engagement | US timezone overlap required
About the Company
A US-based SaaS platform serving event and conference organisers worldwide. Profitable, founder-led, with a mature product and a loyal customer base. The engineering team is small and fast, running a polyglot stack across web and mobile. QA has never had a dedicated owner, and that changes with this hire.
The Role
You're not joining an existing QA function. You're building it from nothing, across a small engineering team that ships without a QA gate today. The mandate is to raise the quality bar without slowing throughput, and to put the measurement, process, and tooling in place that makes defect prevention a team habit rather than an individual heroic effort.
Responsibilities
- Stand up a QA / Verification gate on staging from a blank start, covering negative, edge, black-box, integration, and exploratory testing before every flag-gated release
- Define what counts as a test escape, tag and baseline it in Linear within the first 30 to 60 days, then drive the rate down quarter over quarter
- Own bug SLA triage: every customer-reported bug picked up, reproduced, and severity-assigned by QA within the agreed window
- Embed testable acceptance criteria into the Definition of Ready, working with engineering grooming and sizing to produce them before code is written
- Own and sign off manual test plans for all releases, making QA sign-off a named gate on every production deploy
- Keep the bug backlog under an aging ladder: no P2 over 30 days, no P3 over 60, no P4 over 90
- Prove an automation pattern on one high-value, high-stability surface, then extend coverage to the highest-value areas of the product
Interested in remote work opportunities in QA & Testing? Discover QA & Testing Remote Jobs featuring exclusive positions from top companies that offer flexible work arrangements.
Requirements
- 5+ years in QA, with at least one role where you owned test strategy rather than just executed it
- Demonstrable experience building or significantly expanding a QA function, not inheriting an established one
- Strong on the testing engineers skip: negative paths, edge cases, black-box, integration, exploratory
- Comfortable operating as the only QA in a small engineering team, setting direction without a QA peer
- Manual-first practitioner with sound automation judgment: you know when to automate and when not to
- Able to read acceptance criteria and immediately identify the edge cases they miss
- Tested across web and mobile: frontend JS frameworks, iOS, Android, REST APIs
Browse our curated collection of remote jobs across all categories and industries, featuring positions from top companies worldwide.
Nice to Have
- Exposure to regulated or compliance-heavy domains, particularly K-12 education or continuing education platforms
- Familiarity with PHP (monolith or Laravel), Go, Vue 2/3 with TypeScript, Swift, Kotlin, MySQL
- Experience with ephemeral per-PR staging environments
What's on Offer
- Fully remote, Europe-based, aligned to US working hours
- Long-term freelance placement embedded directly in the client's engineering team with planned in house hire conversion within a few months
- Competitive salary
- High ownership and real influence: you design the QA function, you don't inherit someone else's process
Similar Jobs
Explore other opportunities that match your interests
testeryou
Jobgether