Lead QA Engineer

Remote (United States)

Job Details

Location: United States

Workplace: Remote

Experience: 6–8 years in software quality assurance or testing, including technical or testing leadership experience

Core Areas: QA Strategy, Test Automation, Playwright, Manual & Exploratory Testing, BrowserStack, Regression Testing, Jira, Quality Risk Assessment

Compensation: $85,000–$110,000 annually. Actual compensation depends on skills, experience, and location.

About the Role

The Lead QA Engineer is responsible for defining testing strategies, establishing quality standards, and overseeing software quality assurance across multiple projects. This position combines hands-on manual and automated testing with technical leadership, test planning, defect management, and quality risk assessment. The role requires strong judgment in determining where automation provides value and where focused manual or exploratory testing is more effective.

Responsibilities span automated test development with Playwright, cross-browser and device validation using BrowserStack, and quality management across CMS, SaaS, websites, and digital platforms. The position involves mentoring QA engineers, collaborating with technical and non-technical stakeholders, and improving testing practices throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The estimated allocation is 60% technical leadership and 40% hands-on testing.

What You'll Do

• Lead QA strategy and establish testing standards across multiple projects, aligning test coverage with technical complexity, delivery priorities, and product quality risks.
• Determine the appropriate balance of automated, manual, exploratory, and regression testing based on project requirements, release needs, and the value of automation.
• Design, develop, maintain, and execute automated test suites and frameworks using Playwright.
• Perform cross-browser, cross-device, and cross-platform compatibility testing with BrowserStack.
• Plan and execute detailed manual and exploratory testing for new features, ambiguous requirements, and rapidly changing functionality where automation is not yet the appropriate investment.
• Analyze functional requirements and translate them into actionable test plans, test scenarios, and acceptance criteria while identifying requirement gaps before implementation.
• Act as the technical point of contact for software quality, communicating testing risks, resolving scope disagreements, and negotiating realistic testing timelines with stakeholders.
• Identify, investigate, document, and track software defects in Jira, producing clear, actionable bug reports that require minimal follow-up clarification.
• Coordinate defect resolution and conduct thorough retesting to verify that fixes address the underlying issues.
• Use Jira issue linking, epics, and workflow structures to maintain testing traceability and identify process bottlenecks affecting the SDLC.
• Mentor QA engineers in manual testing techniques, automation practices, defect reporting, and effective technical documentation.
• Provide quality assessments for projects at different development stages, identify significant testing risks, and recommend practical remediation strategies.
• Evaluate emerging QA tools, testing methodologies, and engineering practices, introducing improvements where they provide measurable value to existing workflows.
• Apply AI-assisted testing and productivity tools thoughtfully, validating outputs and recognizing their limitations rather than relying on generated results without verification.
• Support consistent testing practices and quality standards across project teams while remaining available for hands-on defect investigation and complex debugging.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• 6–8 years of professional experience in software quality assurance, software testing, or related QA engineering responsibilities.
• Previous experience serving as a technical lead or testing lead on large, complex, or multi-phase projects.
• Experience testing across multiple CMS or SaaS platforms rather than working exclusively within a single technology stack.
• Experience working in consulting or environments involving multiple stakeholders is considered valuable.

Required Skills

• Strong hands-on expertise with Playwright, including developing, maintaining, and improving automated test suites and testing frameworks.
• Practical experience with BrowserStack or comparable platforms for cross-browser, cross-device, and cross-platform compatibility testing.
• Advanced knowledge of manual testing, exploratory testing, and regression testing, including the ability to select appropriate test approaches based on risk and automation value.
• Ability to interpret ambiguous software requirements and develop clear test plans, actionable test scenarios, and measurable acceptance criteria.
• Strong Jira proficiency, including detailed defect documentation, issue linking, epic structures, test traceability, and identification of workflow inefficiencies.
• Ability to assess software quality risks, investigate complex defects, prioritize testing efforts, and recommend effective solutions across different development stages.
• Strong technical communication skills, including explaining testing risks, quality concerns, and engineering tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to provide technical guidance, mentor QA engineers, and establish consistent software testing standards across project teams.
• Sound judgment in balancing hands-on quality engineering responsibilities with testing leadership, delegation, and stakeholder coordination.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with performance testing and analysis tools such as Lighthouse.
• Knowledge of accessibility testing using Axe and WCAG guidelines.
• Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Familiarity with structured test-case formats such as Gherkin and test case management tools.
• Experience debugging complex software issues and investigating application performance at scale.
• Experience designing, implementing, and improving SDLC processes and engineering standards at both project and team levels.