QA Automation Lead

We are looking for a QA Automation Lead to own Clara's test automation strategy, frameworks, and quality standards. This is a technical leadership role for someone who sets the automation bar across web, API, and mobile surfaces — not a classic people-manager seat. You partner with Engineering Directors, pod leads, and Product to make automation the default path to release confidence, while mentoring QA and engineering teammates who build and adopt the frameworks.

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The Role

You are the technical authority for QA automation at Clara. You own the strategy, architecture, and reliability of the automation platform (Playwright-based web/API frameworks, CI integration, reporting, and enablement) so pods can ship with confidence without QA becoming a bottleneck.

What You Own

• Automation strategy — Define and evolve the automation roadmap (test pyramid, risk-based prioritization, shift-left practices) aligned with product delivery across surfaces such as payments, onboarding, cards, and accounts.
• Framework ownership — Own architecture decisions for shared automation frameworks (e.g. Playwright for web/API; Appium/Wdio where mobile automation applies). Set coding standards, review patterns, and maintainability rules for test code.
• Quality standards — Establish org-wide definitions for release-blocking coverage, flakiness thresholds, and what must be automated vs. explored manually. Protect trust in automated results.
• Stakeholder partnership — Align with Engineering Directors, Pod Leads, Product, and Platform/Infra on capacity trade-offs, environment/test-data dependencies, and adoption plans so pods own execution while QA owns the capability.
• Mentoring & enablement — Coach QA engineers and developers on automation craft, code review, and adoption of shared tooling. Run technical hiring signal for automation-related roles.
• CI/CD & observability — Drive integration of automation into GitHub Actions (smoke on PR, regression on deploy), reporting (e.g. Allure/Qase or internal test-manager), and actionable failure triage.

What You Don't Own

• Formal people management (1:1s, performance ratings, compensation) unless explicitly scoped with your manager — that remains with Engineering/QA Directors.
• Per-pod feature delivery ownership; you enable pods, you do not absorb every manual validation request.

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Technical Skills

• 6+ years in software quality engineering with deep automation experience (not manual-only QA).
• Hands-on ownership of test automation frameworks for web and API (Playwright strongly preferred; Cypress, Selenium, or Webdriver.io also relevant).
• Experience designing modular, data-driven suites (Page Object / screen patterns, tagging for @smoke / @regression, selective CI execution).
• Solid programming skills in TypeScript and/or JavaScript; comfort reading and reviewing production-adjacent code (Java/Spring or React is a plus).
• API testing expertise (contract/integration layers) and familiarity with SQL / test-data design.
• CI/CD integration experience (GitHub Actions or equivalent); understanding of flaky-test management and parallelization.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum or Kanban delivery and risk-based test prioritization.
• Exposure to mobile automation (Appium, BrowserStack) is valuable given Clara's multi-surface products.

Soft Skills

• Proven technical leadership: framework decisions, mentoring, and raising the quality bar across multiple teams.
• Strong stakeholder communication — able to translate automation trade-offs for Product and engineering leadership.
• Strategic mindset: you plan roadmaps and adoption, not only ticket-level scripts.
• Ability to push back constructively on scope that undermines reliability or bus-factor health.
• Excellent English (written and verbal); Spanish is a plus for LATAM collaboration.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with AI-assisted QA tooling (agents that generate/execute tests from tickets, MCP/Playwright CLI workflows).
• Orchestration tools (e.g. n8n) and ticketing integrations (Linear).
• Internal test-management / reporting platforms or replacing external tools (Qase) with owned systems.
• Financial / fintech product experience (payments, cards, onboarding).
• ISTQB or equivalent; prior QA Tech Lead or SDET Lead title.

Disclaimer: "Clara is committed to hybrid work, combining the flexibility of remote work with the collaboration, connection, and professional development benefits that come from working together in the office. The team doesn't have fixed in-office days, but we encourage our Claridians to come into the office based on business or team needs."

Where we work

This is a remote-first role: you'll work from home day to day. You'll ramp up in person with the team, and come together in person for team moments, events and customer visits through the year.