QA Chapter Lead

<h3>Accountabilities:</h3><li>Work as an embedded senior QA engineer within one engineering squad, actively participating in sprint planning, daily standups, reviews, retrospectives, and other squad ceremonies.</li><li>Define and agree on clear acceptance criteria with Product Owners before work enters each sprint.</li><li>Design, write, maintain, and improve automated test suites across appropriate levels, including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.</li><li>Own the squad’s Definition of Done quality gate and ensure agreed quality criteria are consistently met before releases.</li><li>Define and maintain QA standards across the engineering function, including test-pyramid principles, automation tooling, naming conventions, coverage thresholds, and CI quality gates.</li><li>Establish onboarding processes and baseline QA expectations for engineers joining the chapter.</li><li>Lead a monthly QA Guild with the counterpart Chapter Lead to align standards, tooling, frameworks, and Definition of Done practices across engineering.</li><li>Own the selection, evaluation, evolution, and documentation of QA automation frameworks and tools.</li><li>Identify opportunities to introduce, improve, or retire testing technologies based on engineering needs and effectiveness.</li><li>Monitor and report on QA chapter health, including coverage trends, flaky-test rates, automation backlogs, and systemic quality risks.</li><li>Partner with engineering leadership to identify and address quality issues that affect multiple teams or the wider platform.</li><li>Promote a proactive quality culture in which QA is integrated into development from the beginning rather than treated as a final-stage validation function.</li><h2>Requirements:</h2><li>5+ years of professional software QA experience, including at least 2 years in a Lead QA role with responsibility for test strategy across multiple teams.</li><li>Strong automation engineering skills and the ability to write maintainable, readable, production-quality test code that runs reliably in CI environments.</li><li>Deep experience with API testing, including REST APIs, contract testing, integration testing, and backend-focused test design.</li><li>Proven experience defining and maintaining QA standards within Agile product or engineering teams.</li><li>Experience working as an embedded QA contributor throughout the development lifecycle rather than operating solely as a final quality gate.</li><li>Strong understanding of Java-based backend environments, including the ability to read Java code, understand system architecture, and create effective tests for backend functionality.</li><li>Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineering teams and drive consistency across squads without direct line-management authority.</li><li>High level of technical ownership, analytical thinking, attention to detail, and commitment to engineering quality.</li><h2>Strongly preferred:</h2><li>Experience in fintech, payments, digital financial services, or another environment where reliability and transaction integrity are critical.</li><li>Experience with performance and load testing, including API concurrency, throughput, and identifying scalability issues before production.</li><li>Mobile application testing experience, particularly Android.</li><li>Experience establishing or evolving a QA chapter, guild, community of practice, or similar cross-team QA structure.</li><li>Familiarity with AI-assisted testing tools for test-case generation, regression triage, synthetic test data creation, or related QA workflows.</li><h2>Benefits:</h2><li>Fully remote working opportunity within Europe.</li><li>Senior technical leadership scope without traditional line-management responsibilities.</li><li>Opportunity to combine hands-on QA engineering with cross-functional technical leadership.</li><li>Significant influence over QA standards, automation frameworks, testing strategy, and engineering quality practices.</li><li>Collaboration with multiple engineering squads and senior technology stakeholders.</li><li>Opportunity to shape scalable QA practices across a growing international technology organization.</li><li>Exposure to complex fintech and financial-services products operating across multiple international markets.</li><li>Structured recruitment process designed to move efficiently for the right candidate.</li><li>Equal-opportunity environment focused on building a diverse and inclusive team.</li><li>Opportunity to work on technology where reliability, security, and quality have a direct impact on customers and financial services.</li>