Senior Quality Engineer (QA)

Frontiers; Madrid; On-site; EUR 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Office presence

Wellbeing days

Volunteer days

Employee Assistance Programme

Learning Hub

Healthcare and pension

Job summary

Frontiers is seeking a Senior Quality Engineer to evolve our Publishing Platform, rebuilding it around a manuscript-first architecture and AI-assisted editorial workflows. You will collaborate with engineers, product managers, and stakeholders to define validation strategies, implement automated tests, and ensure quality checks are embedded from design through production.

This role rewards collaboration, continuous improvement, and hands-on coaching to raise testing practices across fast-moving,

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Quality Engineering / QA roles.
• Strong understanding of software testing and quality practices, with experience defining validation strategies.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to understand the big picture of the system and analyse interactions between components.
• Experience with API testing (e.g. REST Assured, Postman), as well as integration and end-to-end testing.
• Experience building and maintaining automated tests and working with CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with performance testing (e.g. k6, JMeter).
• Curiosity and proactivity in adopting AI-assisted tools in day-to-day work.

Responsibilities

• Work with Engineers, Product Managers, and stakeholders to ensure requirements are clear, testable, and consistent.
• Define the validation strategy, deciding what needs to be validated, at which level, and how.
• Define test scenarios covering key user flows, and edge cases.
• Identify risks and potential failure scenarios early, before development starts.
• Review and challenge non-functional requirements (performance, reliability, security) to ensure they are clear and measurable.
• Ensure automated tests (API, integration, end-to-end) are in place and run in CI/CD pipelines to validate changes continuously.
• Coordinate testing and validation activities across the team, ensuring quality checks are completed before changes are released.
• Contribute to release readiness, supporting decisions on whether a change is ready to go live based on validation results.
• Define and follow post-release checks, ensuring the system behaves as expected in production.
• Use production data and quality signals to improve validation strategies and prevent recurring issues.
• Improve the team's quality processes and metrics, using data to identify issues and drive improvements.
• Support the team in improving testing practices and sharing ownership of quality.
• Apply AI tools to support testing, validation, and analysis, and help the team use them effectively.
• Contribute to the Quality Engineering community, sharing practices and helping evolve quality standards across teams.

Skills

QA testing

Analytical thinking

Problem-solving

Understanding system interactions

API testing

Automated validation

AI tools usage

Tools

REST Assured

Postman

Playwright

k6

JMeter

Job description

We are looking for a Senior Quality Engineer to join our team in evolving Frontiers' Publishing Platform.

We are currently running an organization-wide project to rebuild our Publishing Platform, introducing a manuscript-first architecture and embedding AI agents to streamline editorial workflows. This transformation includes a redesign of the user experience and the replacement of legacy systems with modular, scalable services that support automation and decision-making.

As a Senior Quality Engineer, you will work closely with Engineers, Product Managers, and stakeholders to ensure that solutions are well-defined, risk-aware, and validated throughout the development lifecycle before reaching production. You will identify risks early, define validation strategies, and ensure quality checks are embedded into everyday development.

You will act as a quality coach and enabler within the team, supporting engineers in improving testing practices, increasing automated validation, embedding quality checks into their daily work, and making effective use of AI tools in these activities.

This role offers the opportunity to shape product quality while working with cross-functional teams in a fast-moving and evolving environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with Engineers, Product Managers, and stakeholders to ensure requirements are clear, testable, and consistent
• Define the validation strategy, deciding what needs to be validated, at which level, and how
• Define test scenarios covering key user flows, and edge cases
• Identify risks and potential failure scenarios early, before development starts
• Review and challenge non-functional requirements (performance, reliability, security) to ensure they are clear and measurable
• Ensure automated tests (API, integration, end-to-end) are in place and run in CI/CD pipelines to validate changes continuously
• Coordinate testing and validation activities across the team, ensuring quality checks are completed before changes are released
• Contribute to release readiness, supporting decisions on whether a change is ready to go live based on validation results
• Define and follow post-release checks, ensuring the system behaves as expected in production
• Use production data and quality signals (errors, logs, metrics, incidents) to improve validation strategies and prevent recurring issues
• Improve the team's quality processes and metrics, using data to identify issues and drive improvements
• Support the team in improving testing practices and sharing ownership of quality
• Apply AI tools to support testing, validation, and analysis, and help the team use them effectively
• Contribute to the Quality Engineering community, sharing practices and helping evolve quality standards across teams

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in Quality Engineering / QA roles
• Strong understanding of software testing and quality practices, with experience defining validation strategies
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to understand the big picture of the system and analyse interactions between components, identifying risks, gaps, and potential failure points
• Experience with API testing (e.g. REST Assured, Postman), as well as integration and end-to-end testing
• Experience building and maintaining automated tests and working with CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with performance testing (e.g. k6, JMeter)
• Curiosity and proactivity in adopting AI-assisted tools in day-to-day work

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience with contract testing (e.g. Pact)
• Experience with modern test automation frameworks (e.g. Playwright)
• Experience in large-scale system migrations
• Experience with BDD practices and tools
• Comfortable reviewing pull requests and contributing to test code when needed

Benefits

• We prioritise office presence and emphasise in-person collaboration, but also offer appropriate adjustments where needed, in line with company policy
• Extra wellbeing days on top of your annual leave allowance
• Up to 3 paid volunteering days each year
• 24/7 confidential Employee Assistance Programme (wellbeing, mental health, legal & financial support)
• Learning & development support via the Frontiers Learning Hub
• Competitive local benefits country dependent (e.g. healthcare and pension/retirement provision)

Frontiers actively embraces diversity and is a safe and welcoming workplace. Recruitment is free from discrimination - including based on race, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. With employees from more than 50 different nations, our diversity creates vibrant teams and constantly challenges us to appreciate multiple perspectives.