Senior QA Engineer (Manual + Automation)

Project

Our client is a 20-year-old Dublin-based software services company specializing in custom Learning Management Systems for clients across Europe and the US. Through a joint venture with Nucleus Labs, the client is now embedding AI/ML capabilities into its LMS — currently powering a v2→v3 upgrade for the largest remote-online-learning provider in Pennsylvania.

Role

We're looking for a hands-on Fullstack QA Engineer who can operate comfortably as a manual tester and build/maintain automated suites using modern agentic AI practices to deliver fast, reliable regression and release confidence. You'll collaborate closely with Product and Engineering, shaping test strategy, hardening quality gates, and raising the bar on reliability in a regulated domain.

Responsibilities

Test Strategy & Planning

• Translate requirements and acceptance criteria into risk-based test plans and coverage maps across UI, API, data, and integrations.
• Define and evolve a pragmatic test pyramid (unit → API → UI; smoke/sanity, regression, UAT).

Manual Testing

• Create and execute test cases for new features, bug fixes, and change requests; perform exploratory testing to uncover edge cases.
• Log high-quality defects with clear reproduction steps, impact, and evidence; drive resolution with developers.

Test Automation (agentic-AI-first)

• Build and maintain stable, reusable automated suites for smoke and regression using modern agentic AI practices; leverage data-driven and keyword/NLP tests.
• Integrate automation into CI/CD (e.g., GitLab / GitHub Actions) with environment tagging, parallelization, and results gating.
• Expand coverage to API (REST / GraphQL) and key workflows; use custom functions when needed.

Quality Operations

• Own test data management and environment readiness; contribute to mock/stub strategies for external services.
• Track and report quality KPIs (defect escape rate, flaky test rate, regression coverage, cycle time to fix).
• Maintain living documentation (test plans, suites, runbooks, reports) in tools like TestRail / Zephyr.

Collaboration & Process

• Partner with Product for clear acceptance criteria; participate in backlog grooming, design reviews, and release readiness.
• Coach teammates on writing testable stories and preventing regressions ("shift-left" mindset).
• Continuously improve test effectiveness and execution speed; reduce flakiness and manual repetition.

Requirements

• 4–6+ years of QA experience testing SaaS / web applications, including significant hands-on manual testing.
• 2+ years building and maintaining automation for UI and/or API — ideally leveraging modern agentic AI practices (and/or tools like Playwright / Cypress / Selenium, Postman).
• Strong grasp of testing methodologies (functional, regression, smoke/sanity, exploratory, risk-based), and test case design (boundary, equivalence partitioning).
• Experience with bug tracking and test management (e.g., Jira, TestRail / Zephyr) and CI/CD-triggered test runs.
• Comfortable validating web technologies (HTML / CSS / JavaScript), browser devtools, and basic SQL / log analysis for root cause clues.
• Clear, concise communicator with a bias for evidence (screenshots, HAR files, logs) and reproducibility.
• Familiarity with Agile practices (Scrum / Kanban) and working in fast-paced, iterative delivery.

Nice to Have

• Power-user experience with modern agentic AI practices for QA: prompt design, evaluation harnesses, data sets, environments, custom functions, CI artifacts, reporting dashboards.
• API testing depth (Postman / Insomnia / newman) and contract testing basics.
• Exposure to regulated environments (e.g., GxP / 21 CFR Part 11, audit trails, e-signatures) and documentation rigor.
• Basic performance and reliability testing (e.g., k6 / JMeter smoke) and accessibility testing familiarity.
• Experience testing AI/ML features (curated test sets, evaluation harnesses, prompt/response validation, guardrails).

If you're equal parts careful tester and pragmatic automator — and you enjoy making complex, regulated workflows feel rock-solid for users — we'd love to talk.