QA Lead

Palitronica Inc.; Waterloo; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A technology company in Waterloo is seeking a QA Lead to manage the end-to-end quality of diverse products, including hardware, firmware, and cloud services. The ideal candidate will have significant experience in QA/SDET, leading strategy, automation, and collaboration across teams. This role demands technical expertise with a hands-on approach and coaching abilities.

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years in QA/SDET with 2+ years leading strategy or a small team.
• Hands-on with test frameworks and device/HIL scripting.
• Experience validating device/edge + cloud systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end test strategy across devices, cloud services, and web UI.
• Build CI-driven automation and quality gates.
• Coach/mentor/help hire QA developers.

Skills

QA/SDET experience

Test frameworks and device/HIL scripting

Automation at API and UI layers

Test design

Linux and Docker

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

CI/CD Tools

k6

Azure

Job description

About The Role

Palitronica builds industrial edge + cloud products used in demanding environments. Our work spans hardware, firmware, ML, and full‑stack software. We’re looking for a QA Lead to own end‑to‑end quality: from hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HIL) and device bring‑up, to backend APIs and web UI, to production monitoring and release readiness.

What You’ll Do

• Own the end‑to‑end test strategy across devices, cloud services, and web UI.
• Build CI‑driven automation and quality gates; drive regression, smoke, and long‑haul stability runs.
• Stand up reproducible Hardware-in-the-Loop pipelines: device orchestration, power cycling, firmware flashing, serial/USB control, log capture.
• Define release criteria, lead bug triage/RCA, and partner with DevOps on observability and rollback/canary playbooks.
• Coach/mentor/help hire QA developers.

What You’ll Bring

• 6–10+ years in QA/SDET with 2+ years leading strategy or a small team.
• Hands‑on with test frameworks and device/HIL scripting; comfortable with Linux and Docker.
• Proven automation at API + UI layers integrated into CI; risk‑based test design.
• Experience validating device/edge + cloud systems; strong communication and cross‑team collaboration.

Nice to have

• Electronics/RF lab familiarity
• Load and performance testing experience, e.g., k6
• SBOM/SAST/DAST
• Cloud familiarity, e.g., Azure
• ML‑aware validation