QA Lead

Kastech; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Kastech, based in Toronto, seeks an experienced QA Lead to drive functional quality assurance for complex banking applications. The role requires hands-on testing, test automation, and leadership across cross-functional teams to ensure high-quality releases.

You will own end-to-end test coverage, validate APIs and data, and mentor junior QA engineers. Hybrid work in Toronto with strong collaboration across business, product, and technical teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of QA experience.
• Hands-on functional and manual testing.
• Strong test automation experience across UI, API, and backend.
• Experience with data-intensive systems and batch processing.
• Experience with Kafka, ETL, and data validation.
• Strong SQL and database validation experience.
• Experience with API testing, particularly REST APIs.
• Exposure to AI-assisted testing/GenAI testing tools.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, communication, and leadership skills.
• Banking or financial services experience is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead functional, regression, integration, system, and end-to-end testing for complex applications.
• Analyze business and technical requirements and identify test scenarios, coverage gaps, and quality risks.
• Develop and maintain test plans, test scenarios, test cases, traceability matrices, test evidence, execution reports, and release-quality summaries.
• Perform database and backend validation using SQL.
• Validate APIs and service integrations using tools such as Postman.
• Develop, maintain, and execute automated UI, API, and backend tests.
• Test batch processing systems, scheduled jobs, dependencies, restart/recovery scenarios, and batch reconciliation.
• Validate Kafka message flows, topics, payloads, and event-driven integrations.
• Perform ETL testing, source-to-target validation, transformation validation, and data reconciliation.
• Lead defect analysis, triage, resolution tracking, and retesting.
• Estimate QA effort, plan test execution, identify risks, and communicate quality status.
• Mentor junior QA engineers and improve QA practices, reusable test assets, and automation coverage.
• Contribute to AI-assisted QA and use of GenAI to improve testing efficiency and coverage.

Skills

QA leadership

Manual testing

Test automation

SQL validation

Kafka event-driven

ETL testing

API testing

Selenium

Cypress

Playwright

Java

Python

CI/CD pipelines

Azure

Kubernetes

GenAI testing

Leadership

Tools

Postman

Git

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Azure DevOps

SQL tooling

Selenium IDE

Job description

• Location: Toronto, Canada
• Work Model: Hybrid
• Experience: 8+ years
• Domain: Banking / Financial Services

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced QA Lead to lead functional quality assurance activities for

complex banking and financial applications. The role requires strong hands-on functional and

manual testing expertise, practical test automation experience, database validation skills, and

the ability to lead QA activities across complex enterprise implementations.

The QA Lead will own end-to-end test coverage across backend processes, APIs, integrations,

file-based workflows, batch processing, and data validation. The role will work closely with

developers, business analysts, product teams, technical consultants, and other QA engineers to

ensure high-quality releases.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead functional, regression, integration, system, and end-to-end testing for complex applications.
• Analyze business and technical requirements and identify test scenarios, coverage gaps, and quality risks.
• Develop and maintain test plans, test scenarios, test cases, traceability matrices, test evidence, execution reports, and release-quality summaries.
• Perform database and backend validation using SQL.
• Validate APIs and service integrations using tools such as Postman.
• Develop, maintain, and execute automated UI, API, and backend tests.
• Test batch processing systems, scheduled jobs, dependencies, restart/recovery scenarios, and batch reconciliation.
• Validate Kafka message flows, topics, payloads, and event-driven integrations.
• Perform ETL testing, source-to-target validation, transformation validation, and data reconciliation.
• Lead defect analysis, triage, resolution tracking, and retesting.
• Estimate QA effort, plan test execution, identify risks, and communicate quality status.
• Mentor junior QA engineers and improve QA practices, reusable test assets, and automation coverage.
• Contribute to AI-assisted QA and use of GenAI to improve testing efficiency and coverage.

Required Skills

• 8+ years of QA experience.
• Strong hands-on functional/manual testing experience.
• Strong test automation experience.
• Experience with batch processing and data-intensive systems.
• Experience with Kafka and event-driven systems.
• Experience with ETL/data pipeline testing.
• Strong SQL and database validation experience.
• Experience with Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Rest Assured, Java, Python, or equivalent technologies.
• Experience with Git, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Exposure to Azure, Kubernetes, microservices, and cloud-native environments.
• Experience with API testing, particularly REST APIs.
• Exposure to AI-assisted testing/GenAI testing tools.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, communication, and leadership skills.
• Banking or financial services experience is strongly preferred.