QA Lead

Propel; Thiruvananthapuram; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Propel Software is seeking a QA leader who blends quality judgment with product thinking. This isn’t a developer role; you’ll challenge requirements, validate user value, and mitigate risks in a fast‑paced environment.

Based in Trivandrum, this in‑office position requires attendance 4+ days per week. You’ll design scalable test strategies across UI, API, and integration, mentor peers, and elevate team standards with automation using Playwright (TypeScript) or Selenium (Java).

Qualifications

• Extensive experience leading QA teams and driving quality ownership for complex products.
• Strong ability to design and implement scalable test strategies across UI, API, and integration.
• Hands-on automation experience with modern tools and coding standards.
• Proven capability to analyze requirements and translate risk into test coverage.
• Experience mentoring peers and elevating team standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead with QA mindset: challenge requirements, identify risks, and drive quality decisions.
• Develop product-oriented testing that anticipates real-user behavior and misuse.
• Design test architectures spanning UI, API, and integration layers.
• Build and maintain automation frameworks with robust reporting and maintainable code.

Skills

QA leadership

Automation frameworks

Playwright

TypeScript

Selenium

Risk analysis

Test strategy

Tools

Playwright

Selenium

Job description

COMPANY

Propel Software transforms the way product companies work. Our product value management platform connects commercial and product teams to optimize decision making, drive process efficiencies, and engage customers with compelling products and experiences. Propel has a proven track record of improving product quality, speeding time to revenue and profit, and improving customer satisfaction. Recognized as a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 winner and one of Fortune’s Most Innovative Companies in America, Propel is built on Salesforce and drives product success for hyper growth startups, corporate pioneers, and Fortune 500 leaders in the high tech, medtech and consumer goods industries.

ROLE

We seek a QA professional who leads with quality judgment and product thinking, backed by elite automation engineering skills. This is not a developer role focused on automation - it's a quality leadership role where you challenge assumptions, validate user value (not just verify implementation), and proactively mitigate risks in a high-velocity environment.

The right candidate identifies where products fail real users, translates insights into robust test strategies, and accelerates delivery by surfacing issues early. They bring solutions, mentor peers, and elevate team standards.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an in-office position located in Trivandrum, requiring attendance 4+ days per week. By submitting your application, you confirm that you are either presently located in Trivandrum or prepared to relocate. Relocation assistance is not provided for this role.

In this role you can expect to:

• Lead with QA mindset: Challenge requirements and assumptions; distinguish verification (does it work as specified?) from validation (does it solve the user problem?); seek out failure modes, edge cases, and business risks beyond happy paths.
• Product-oriented testing: Reason like an end user—map workflows, anticipate misuse, and assess real-world impact; partner with PMs and devs early to refine acceptance criteria and prevent defects.
• Test strategy & architecture: Design scalable, risk-based test strategies across UI, API, integration, and regression layers, selecting appropriate test levels and test types aligned to product and business risk.
• Automation excellence: Build and maintain enterprise-grade automation frameworks in Playwright with TypeScript or Selenium with Java, including fixtures, parallel execution, custom utilities, and rich reporting; treat test code as production software with unit tests, linting, and modular design.
• Quality risk leadership: Lead the identification, analysis, and prioritization of product risks; derive test conditions and coverage depth from these risks and keep the team aligned on what “good enough” looks like for each release.
• Test process improvement: Identify bottlenecks, quality gaps, and inefficiencies; propose and implement pragmatic improvements to test processes, tooling, and collaboration practices.
• Reporting & insights: Provide concise risk summaries, coverage insights, and data-driven recommendations to stakeholders, using meaningful metrics such as defect trends, risk coverage, and pipeline health.
• Habitually challenges assumptions from developers, PMs, and stakeholders in a collaborative way that improves the product and reduces downstream defects.

To be successful in this role you bring:

• 7 to 10 years combined experience in software quality assurance and test automation, including hands‑on ownership of quality for complex products or domains.
• 4+ years of hands‑on experience building and maintaining scalable test automation frameworks using modern tools like Playwright (TypeScript preferred) or Selenium (Java preferred).
• Demonstrated experience driving overall test strategy (risk analysis, test planning, choice of levels and types of testing, entry/exit criteria) for features or releases as a senior or lead QA/SDET.
• Strong foundational testing skills in functional, regression, exploratory, and integration testing, with concrete examples of finding critical issues beyond scripted paths.
• Proven ability to analyze requirements and designs to uncover gaps, ambiguous behavior, and high‑risk areas before implementation. Experience applying structured test design techniques—such as equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, pairwise (combinatorial) testing—and choosing techniques appropriate to the risk and complexity.
• Demonstrated skill in designing tests around real user journeys, business workflows, and failure scenarios rather than just API endpoints or UI components in isolation.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experienced in identifying performance bottlenecks (k6 preferred; JMeter, BlazeMeter also welcome) and providing optimization recommendations
• AI‑forward mindset with hands‑on experience leveraging tools like Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, or similar assistants for test authoring, refactoring, and analysis.

Authorization to work in India is required; please note that at this time, Propel is not sponsoring visas for any positions.

Additional Info

Location: This is an in office position located in Trivandrum.

Equal Opportunity: Propel is proud to be an equal‑opportunity workplace where different perspectives are valued and every voice is heard. We’re dedicated to pursuing and hiring a talented and diverse workforce.