Lead Software QA Engineer

Lead Software Engineer – QA

We’re working with a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company operating in a complex, safety-critical domain. They are building a highly integrated software platform spanning real-time systems, hardware-adjacent services, and customer-facing applications.

This is a founding QA role. You will define how quality is engineered across the organisation, while remaining deeply hands-on in building automation, tooling, and test infrastructure.

The Role

As Lead Software Engineer – QA, you will own the end-to-end quality and automated validation strategy across the entire software stack. You’ll work closely with engineering teams to embed quality into system design, delivery, and operations.

This role suits a senior engineer who enjoys building systems and tooling, thinks strategically about quality, and wants to shape QA practices at company level — not just execute test plans.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and lead the overall QA and automated testing strategy (unit → system → end-to-end).

• Design and build scalable, reliable test frameworks and tooling.

• Develop test harnesses for distributed, real-time, and hardware-adjacent systems.

• Ensure tests provide fast, trustworthy feedback and meaningful signal.

• Establish standards for test coverage, reliability, and release confidence.

• Own test observability, reporting, and learnings from incidents or failures.

• Mentor engineers and drive adoption of best practices across teams.

• Champion a culture where quality is owned by everyone.

Requirements

• 8+ years’ experience building automated test frameworks, QA platforms, or developer tooling.

• Strong software engineering background (language-agnostic; Python, Java, C++, or similar).

• Deep understanding of testing strategies across all levels.

• Experience with distributed, real-time, or safety-critical systems strongly preferred.

• Proven ability to lead technical strategy while remaining hands-on.

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