[Remote] Lead, Software Quality Assurance- Contract-to-Hire

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Lirio is a technology/software company that specializes in behavioral science, data science, and machine learning. The Software QA Lead Engineer is responsible for quality strategy and execution across Lirio’s cloud-native platform, leading a shift-left quality approach and mentoring QA engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, and execution of comprehensive test strategy across APIs, services, event-driven workflows (Kafka), and UI surfaces
• Own and evolve automated test coverage (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end) and maintain a risk-based manual test strategy where automation is not practical
• Ensure test coverage for functional, regression, integration, performance, and reliability testing (timeouts, retries, idempotency, failure modes)
• Advocate for quality engineering practices (TDD where appropriate, CI quality gates, code review standards, and testability in design)
• Define and maintain quality gates in CI/CD (e.g., minimum coverage thresholds, contract test pass, critical path E2E pass, vulnerability scan pass where applicable)
• Partner with Cloud/SRE to validate release readiness via observability (logging, metrics, tracing) and operational dashboards
• Embed quality and testability considerations into feature and system design by reviewing application logic, APIs, data models, event contracts, and UI workflows in partnership with engineers
• Establish and enforce standards for automation quality, including flakiness reduction, stabilization practices, clear ownership, and expectations for timely remediation of broken or unreliable tests
• Define and document QA processes and best practices
• Collaborate with product owners and developers to clarify requirements and acceptance criteria
• Participate in backlog refinement and sprint planning to ensure testability of features
• Facilitate agile ceremonies as needed
• Build and maintain shared QA practices, documentation, and knowledge-sharing mechanisms (playbooks, training, cross-coverage) to avoid single points of failure across squads and releases
• Standardize testing approaches for event-driven systems, including message schema validation, backward compatibility, replay scenarios, idempotency, ordering assumptions, and failure handling (Kafka and similar messaging technologies)
• Stay current with industry trends, tools, and technologies in software testing
• Promote continuous improvement and innovation within the QA team
• Evaluate and adopt tooling that improves cycle time (local test environments, ephemeral environments, test data management)
• Support production releases, participate in incident triage, and drive root cause analysis with Engineering, SRE/Cloud, and Customer Operations
• Track defect escape trends and drive corrective actions (test additions, gating changes, process improvements)
• Triage and resolve defects, collaborating with development and support teams

Skills

• 5-7 years of related experience
• Bachelor's degree in related field
• Experienced with test automation for APIs/services (e.g., JUnit/TestNG for JVM services, PyTest for Python services)
• UI automation experience (e.g., Cypress or Playwright, Jasmine) where applicable
• Performance testing (e.g., Gatling, k6, JMeter) and contract testing (e.g., Pact or equivalent) experience
• Observability tooling familiarity (Datadog/OpenTelemetry concepts)
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools and processes
• Experience with version control (e.g., Git)
• Cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure)
• Scripting and programming languages (e.g., Java, TypeScript, Groovy, Python)
• Agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum, XP, SAFe)
• Experience with Databases/SQL, Kafka, and Kubernetes
• Leadership and coaching skills
• Ability to operate in ambiguity and improve systems iteratively (not waiting for perfect process)
• Strong judgment around risk-based testing and release decisions
• Strong organizational and time management skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities
• Adaptability and problem-solving skills
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders

Benefits

• Medical (HSA available)
• Dental
• Vision
• Short-term & long-term disability (company-paid)
• Life & AD&D (company-paid)
• 401K with company match
• 10 paid holidays, quarterly company closure dates, + holiday week company closure
• Flexible time off policy
• Work from home
• 6 weeks paid parental leave

Company Overview

• Lirio is a behavior change AI platform that delivers behavioral engagement solutions for organizations. It was founded in 2016, and is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, with a workforce of 51-200 employees. Its website is https://lirio.com.

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