Senior Quality Engineer

Emerge; Auckland; On-site; NZD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Emerge in New Zealand seeks a Senior Quality Engineer to strengthen automation across web, mobile and API surfaces. You will write robust automated tests, work with developers, and provide clear release-readiness signals to the team.

You bring 7+ years in test automation and quality engineering, experience building frameworks, and hands-on knowledge of Playwright, Cypress or WebdriverIO. Fintech/regulatory context is a plus; NZ right to work is required.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in test automation and quality engineering.
• Experience building or extending automation frameworks.
• Experience with UI automation tools (Playwright/Cypress/WebdriverIO) and API testing.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain risk-based test strategies from requirements to release.
• Build and extend automated regression coverage across web, mobile, API and contract testing.
• Write, maintain and improve automated tests in CI pipelines.
• Collaborate with developers to test changes early and improve testability.
• Support release readiness decisions with evidence, risk analysis and quality signals.

Skills

Automation depth

Quality engineering

Test strategy

CI pipelines

AI tooling in testing

Tools

Playwright

Cypress

WebdriverIO

Job description

About Emerge

Emerge is a fast-growing New Zealand fintech reshaping what modern financial services can look like. Built at the intersection of technology, product, engineering and regulated financial services, the business is creating smart, scalable financial products for people, families and businesses.

The business already has strong foundations in place across transactional accounts, payments and expense management, and is now moving into a wider product suite. That growth creates a rare opportunity for an experienced quality engineer to strengthen how Emerge ships safely, quickly and with confidence.

About the role

As Senior Quality Engineer, you will bring strong technical QA and automation capability into a small, experienced quality team. Emerge already has Senior Quality Engineers with strong product knowledge and manual testing depth. This role will add to that capability by expanding automation, strengthening release readiness and lifting quality practice across web, mobile and API surfaces.

This is a hands-on role for someone who can write robust automated tests, work closely with developers, and give clear, evidence-based release readiness signals. You will help move quality earlier in the delivery lifecycle, reduce reliance on manual regression, and use AI tooling thoughtfully to improve testing coverage and speed.

You will:

• Define and maintain risk-based test strategies for features from requirement through to release.
• Build and extend automated regression coverage across web, mobile, API and contract testing.
• Write, maintain and improve automated tests in CI, while keeping flaky tests and automation debt under control.
• Work closely with developers to test changes against pull requests and improve testability early.
• Support release readiness decisions with clear evidence, risk analysis and quality signals.
• Use AI tools to generate, extend and maintain tests, while applying strong human review and judgement.
• Help grow quality engineering practices across the team through standards, coaching and continuous improvement.

About you

You are a technical quality engineer who sees quality as a product capability, not a ticket queue. You have strong automation depth, sound risk judgement and the confidence to speak up when something is not ready. You are practical, hands-on and comfortable working across manual and automated testing where needed, but your strength is building the systems and coverage that make quality more scalable.

Where you might be right now

You may be a senior QA engineer, automation engineer, quality engineer or QA lead who has built or significantly improved automated test capability. You may come from a larger organisation with mature automation practices, provided you have stayed hands-on, or from a start-up, scale-up or product-led environment where you have had to work across the full quality lifecycle.

You will bring

• Significant experience in test automation and quality engineering, ideally 7+ years, with strong automation depth.
• Experience building or extending automation frameworks, platforms or regression suites.
• Production experience with modern UI automation tools such as Playwright, Cypress or WebdriverIO.
• Strong API testing experience and exposure across at least two of web, mobile and API automation.
• Programming ability in TypeScript, Kotlin, Java or similar, with confidence working in CI pipelines.
• Practical experience using AI tooling in test work, with clear judgement about review, quality and limits.
• Fintech, payments, banking, identity or regulated product experience would be helpful, but is not essential.
• Current right to work in New Zealand.

Why join Emerge?

• Help shape a more automation-led quality function in a fast-growing fintech.
• Work across web, mobile and API products that support real customers and financial workflows.
• Join a small, high-trust engineering team where quality has a visible impact on product decisions.
• Use AI tooling seriously, while keeping human judgement and product risk at the centre.
• Make a meaningful contribution as Emerge scales its product suite and engineering capability.