Lead QA Engineer (Generalist)

Dwarf Engineering is a Ukrainian product & engineering company shaping the future of DefenseTech.
We create game-changing tech solutions that ease the work and save the lives of the Defense Forces of Ukraine, giving them the advantage they need.
Our mission is to make advanced defense technologies accessible and to deliver them faster where they matter most.

We are looking for a proactive and experienced Lead QA Engineer (Generalist) with a proven track record in technical leadership to join our team. In this critical role, you will have the unique opportunity to build and own our entire automation testing process from scratch. You will be responsible for defining the strategy and implementing frameworks to ensure the quality of our backend services, desktop applications, and supporting tools!

If it sounds like you:
 

• You are a "builder" at heart and thrive on the challenge of creating new processes from scratch, rather than just maintaining existing ones;
• You demonstrate strong ownership and initiative, taking full responsibility for the quality of your deliverables from strategy to execution;
• You are a proactive problem-solver, capable of working independently to investigate complex issues and find solutions;
• You are an excellent communicator and collaborator, comfortable working closely with developers and DevOps to make quality a shared goal;
• You are curious and detail-oriented, passionate about building reliable, stable, and scalable test solutions that the team can trust;
• You are comfortable providing constructive feedback during technical reviews to improve system testability and reliability.

Requirements/Hard Skills:
 

• 6+ years of professional experience as a General QA Engineer (focusing on backend or full-stack systems), including experience in a leadership role;
• Proven ability to design, implement, or significantly extend automation frameworks from the ground up;
• Strong proficiency in test design principles (unit, integration, API, end-to-end);
• Hands-on experience with automation frameworks (Python-based frameworks like Pytest, Robot, or similar are strongly preferred);
• Practical experience with API testing (e.g., REST, Postman, requests library);
• Solid experience working with CI/CD systems (e.g., GitLab CI, Jenkins);
• A firm understanding of containerized environments (Docker, Docker Compose);
• Demonstrated ability to create and maintain automated test documentation and reporting (test plans, coverage, results).

Responsibilities:
 

• Define, implement, and maintain the automated test strategy and coverage across our backend, desktop, and internal tools;
• Design and build robust, scalable automated test suites for APIs, data flows, and core business logic, primarily using Python-based tools;
• Set up, configure, and manage test environments for both local development and CI/CD pipelines using containers (Docker) or virtualized setups;
• Actively participate in feature planning and architecture reviews to ensure testability and reliability are built in from the start;
• Integrate all automated test suites into our CI/CD pipelines and establish clear, actionable reporting;
• Identify, track, and report defects with detailed logs and diagnostic data to assist in rapid resolution;
• Own the release validation process by running and maintaining automated regression and smoke test suites;
• Contribute to our observability efforts (logs, metrics, error reporting) from a quality assurance perspective.

What we offer:
 

• Work for Ukraine's victory at Defense Tech company, where your work directly contributes to strengthening our country's defense capabilities and achieving victory;
• We guarantee full official employment from day one;
• Reservation of employees from day one, subject to relevant documents;
• Flexible schedule, you can begin your workday anytime up to 12:00 PM, finishing accordingly (8 working hours + 1 hour lunch) with  1 day of work from home per week;
• You will receive a full technical setup and height-adjustable desks;
• Our office is located in Kyiv (left bank).