Lead QA Engineer (12 month contract)

Deputy USA; Sydney; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Deputy, a global SaaS workforce management company, is seeking a Senior QA Engineer on a 12-month maternity leave cover in Sydney. You will define quality strategy, design scalable test automation, and lead a QA team to improve product quality.

You will collaborate with Product, Development, Operations to align QA with business goals, evaluate new tools, and drive automation across the SDLC for reliable software delivery.

Qualifications

• Experience leading QA for complex software projects.
• Proven ability to design scalable test automation strategies.
• Strong collaboration with Product, Dev, and Ops teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and implement QA strategy and roadmap.
• Architect scalable automation frameworks and CI integration.
• Provide technical guidance to QA engineers and improve processes with AI-enabled tools.

Skills

Quality assurance

Test automation

Leadership

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field

Master’s degree is a plus

Tools

Jenkins

GitLab CI/CD

Travis CI

OpenAPI/Swagger

SQL

AWS/GCP/Azure

Job description

Deputy is a global SaaS workforce management company with hubs in Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco and London, plus team members working remotely across the United States. Our platform serves over 1.5 million workers and 375,000 workplaces across 100+ countries. We are backed by top global investors and achieved Unicorn status in 2024.

At Deputy, we’re improving the world of work, one shift at a time, for 80% of the world’s workforce: hourly workers. These are the dedicated employees who keep our world running – from baristas to nurses, cleaners to delivery drivers, florists to factory workers. Despite their vital role in society, most workplace technology has focused on those workers who sit behind a desk, but at Deputy, we transform the frontline. When businesses use Deputy, their workplaces thrive – the business is more profitable, compliant, and productive, while the workers are more engaged and happier at work.

We're becoming an AI-native company, a commitment that means you'll be empowered (and expected) to use AI tools and thinking in your day-to-day work. You'll have the training, support, and freedom to use AI responsibly and creatively to spark ideas, solve problems faster, and unlock new ways of working.

If you’re passionate about creating solutions that put people first and helping businesses and their teams thrive, join us at Deputy and make an impact where it matters most!

The Role

In this role, you'll define and implement the overall quality assurance strategy for our organisation, design and develop scalable test automation frameworks, and evaluate testing tools and technologies to enhance our QA processes.

You'll provide technical leadership to our QA team, drive innovation in QA methodologies, and ensure the highest standards of quality across our software products.

This is a 12 month maternity leave cover.

Responsibilities

Quality Strategy

• Define and implement the organisation’s quality assurance strategy and roadmap.
• Design and execute comprehensive test strategies across the software development lifecycle.
• Assess and triage the impact and scope of issues identified during testing, and report on the coverage and effectiveness of test strategies.

Test Automation

• Architect and develop scalable, maintainable automation frameworks for functional, regression and performance testing.
• Integrate automated tests and testing frameworks into CI workflows.
• Evaluate and select testing tools and technologies, and build reusable frameworks, dashboards and AI agents that make quality increasingly self-serve for product teams.

Leadership and Continuous Improvement

• Collaborate with Product, Development, Operations and technical stakeholders to align quality standards with business goals.
• Provide technical guidance to QA engineers and act as a quality assurance subject matter expert across the organisation.
• Improve QA processes through automation, optimisation and emerging practices, including AI-enabled tools where they demonstrably improve quality and efficiency.

What we are looking for

Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field. A master’s degree is a plus.
• 6+ years of Quality Assurance experience, including 2+ years as a Senior QA Engineer, with a focus on test automation.
• Demonstrated success designing and implementing scalable test automation frameworks for complex software projects.

Technical Skills

• Experience with programming languages such as PHP, JavaScript or Go, alongside test automation tools and frameworks.
• Cloud certification and experience working in large-scale environments using AWS, Google Cloud or Azure.
• Experience with agile methodologies and CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD or Travis CI.
• Knowledge of database technologies and SQL, along with API testing using OpenAPI, Swagger or gRPC.

Leadership and Quality Expertise

• Deep understanding of software development methodologies, quality assurance best practices and industry standards.
• Strong leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate across teams.