Lead QA Engineer

We are looking for a Lead QA Automation Engineer to own and improve the quality assurance process across our web and mobile products, including our media websites and the Drops app.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will be responsible for maintaining and improving our automated test infrastructure, expanding test coverage, managing manual QA efforts, and partnering with Engineering leadership to define a scalable QA process.

Our current automation stack includes Playwright, GitHub Actions, Testiny, and Sauce Labs. The existing automation pipeline was originally created by Engineering and is business-critical, but it needs dedicated QA ownership, maintenance, and improvement. Our QA team is currently small, with one manual QA tester, and we expect this role to help build the foundation for a growing QA function.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on QA automation engineer with enough experience to take ownership of both automation and process. They should be comfortable working directly in Playwright tests and CI pipelines, but also capable of managing manual QA execution, improving test planning, and partnering with Engineering leadership on release quality. This person should be technical, organized, pragmatic, and comfortable joining a small QA function where they will need to bring structure without adding unnecessary process.

Key Responsibilities

Test Automation Ownership

• Own, maintain, and improve automated testing pipelines for our media websites and mobile applications.
• Build, update, and maintain automated tests using Playwright or similar browser automation frameworks.
• Improve test reliability, reduce flaky tests, and optimize automated test execution time.
• Maintain and improve CI test workflows using GitHub Actions.
• Expand automated coverage for critical user flows, regression areas, and high-risk product functionality.
• Establish standards for how automated tests are written, reviewed, organized, and maintained.
• Work with Engineering to ensure applications are testable and automation-friendly.
• Investigate failed test runs, identify root causes, and coordinate fixes with Engineering when needed.

QA Process and Strategy

• Define and improve QA processes across web and mobile products.
• Collaborate with Engineering leads on release quality standards, defect triage, regression planning, and QA workflow.
• Determine the appropriate balance between automated testing, manual testing, exploratory testing, and smoke testing.
• Create practical QA guidelines for feature validation, regression testing, release readiness, and production verification.
• Improve visibility into product quality through test reporting, defect trends, and release risk communication.
• Help establish useful quality gates that improve confidence without unnecessarily slowing down delivery.

Manual QA Leadership

• Manage, support, and mentor the existing manual QA tester.
• Plan and coordinate manual QA work across active development, regression cycles, and releases.
• Ensure manual test cases are well organized, current, and mapped to meaningful product coverage.
• Use Testiny to manage test cases, test runs, QA documentation, and regression coverage.
• Help onboard and mentor additional QA team members as the team grows.
• Create a QA operating model that works for a small team now and can scale over time.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Engineering, Product, Design, and other stakeholders to understand requirements, risks, and acceptance criteria.
• Participate in sprint planning, feature reviews, bug triage, and release planning.
• Communicate quality risks clearly and proactively.
• Help identify gaps in requirements, edge cases, and user experience issues before release.
• Advocate for quality while balancing speed, pragmatism, and business priorities.

Mobile, Device, and Cross-Browser Testing

• Support QA efforts for the Drops app and related mobile experiences.
• Use Sauce Labs or similar tools for cross-browser, cross-device, and mobile testing.
• Help define supported device, browser, and operating system coverage.
• Ensure critical experiences are validated across the environments most important to our users.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional QA experience, including hands-on experience testing web applications.
• 3+ years of experience building and maintaining automated test suites for production applications.
• 2+ years of experience with modern browser automation frameworks such as Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium. Playwright experience is strongly preferred.
• 1+ year of experience leading QA work, mentoring QA testers, managing QA execution, or owning QA process across a product or engineering team.
• Experience writing or maintaining automated tests in JavaScript or TypeScript.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, preferably using GitHub Actions.
• Experience with test case management tools such as Testiny, TestRail, Zephyr, or similar.
• Experience with cross-browser and cross-device testing tools such as Sauce Labs, BrowserStack, or similar.
• Strong understanding of regression testing, smoke testing, exploratory testing, release validation, and defect lifecycle management.
• Ability to troubleshoot failed automated tests and distinguish between test issues, environment issues, and application defects.
• Experience collaborating directly with Engineering, Product, and Design teams.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to clearly explain QA risks, test coverage gaps, and release concerns.
• Ability to operate independently and bring structure to a QA function that is still growing.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience testing mobile applications.
• Experience testing consumer-facing media, publishing, content, advertising, subscription, or e-commerce products.
• Experience with API testing.
• Experience with accessibility testing, visual regression testing, or performance testing.
• Experience improving or rebuilding an existing automated test suite.
• Experience helping grow a QA team from an early-stage or small-team environment.
• Familiarity with analytics, tracking, attribution, or ad-related QA workflows.
• Experience creating QA dashboards, test reports, or release quality metrics.

Success in This Role Looks Like

• The existing Playwright and GitHub Actions pipeline becomes more stable, maintainable, and trusted by Engineering.
• Critical user flows across our media websites and Drops app have clear automated and manual test coverage.
• Manual QA work is organized, repeatable, and aligned with product and engineering priorities.
• QA is involved earlier in the development process, not only at the end of release cycles.
• Engineering teams have better visibility into test results, release risks, and defect trends.
• Releases become more predictable, with fewer escaped defects and less last-minute QA uncertainty.
• The QA function is set up to scale as we hire additional QA team members.

We Offer

This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-paced, health experience company reshaping how people understand and navigate life with chronic, serious, and rare conditions. In addition to a competitive salary, rich health plans, and dynamic benefits package, our company offers the following:

• The culture: HealthCentral provides a welcoming, positive work environment. Thanks to our people, HealthCentral has been recognized as a Great Place To Work® certified company! Our company culture is our top priority and we are consistently evaluating ways to better support our employees and teams.
• The people. You can't have a great company culture without great people! You will work alongside talented, supportive, smart, and kind leaders and teams - people you can be proud to work with!
• The business. Work you can feel great about! This is an opportunity to provide individuals the tools and resources to become more engaged in their health and wellness. Our mission is to empower patients and caregivers with information and applications to efficiently navigate the healthcare landscape and, as a result, achieve better health through the use of our products and services.
• The perks. HealthCentral offers a flexible remote working culture allowing employees to work from agreed upon work locations. We offer competitive compensation, comprehensive medical/dental/vision benefits, 401K, 21 days PTO, 6 Wellness Days, 2 Volunteer Days, 2 Floating Holidays, and an extensive holiday schedule along with Summer Fridays.