Contractor: Senior Quality Engineer

Hidden Jobs; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Newsela is seeking a hands-on Senior Full-Stack Quality Engineer to own end-to-end software quality within an Agile scrum team supporting classroom learning products. You’ll work across front-end apps, cloud services, language models, and third‑party AI integrations to ensure reliable, education‑driven software used by millions of students.

You will design automated test frameworks, validate AI features, drive release readiness, mentor peers, and collaborate with product and design to translate

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software testing and QA experience in an Agile Scrum environment.
• 5+ years building automated test frameworks using TypeScript, JavaScript, or Python, with hands-on Playwright or WebdriverIO work.
• Broad testing capability across manual, exploratory, regression, integration, API/services, and database testing.
• Solid grasp of Git branching, pull request workflows, and incremental CI/CD deployment pipelines.
• Daily experience using AI coding assistants such as Claude Code or GitHub Copilot, paired with strong critical thinking and quality ownership.
• Clear, proactive communication, with confidence surfacing release risks, defect trends, and production issues to stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and execute automated test frameworks and regression suites spanning UI, API, and service layers, leveraging AI‑assisted authoring practices.
• Validate non‑deterministic AI features and large language model outputs against defined quality standards, including internally built models and third‑party AI tools.
• Drive test planning, execution, and release support from story validation through production deployment, owning quality decisions largely without oversight.
• Partner early with product management, design, and engineering to translate ambiguous requirements into clear, testable acceptance criteria.
• Mentor mid‑level quality engineers, lead code reviews, and act as the team's quality advocate across design and implementation discussions.
• Establish defect tracking, triage, and observability practices, applying AI tooling to accelerate detection, reproduction, and resolution workflows.

Skills

QA experience

Automation frameworks

TypeScript

JavaScript

Python

Playwright

WebdriverIO

Exploratory testing

CI/CD

Git workflows

AI tools

Communication

Tools

TestRail

Jira

Xray

Zephyr

Datadog

Sentry

New Relic

K6

JMeter

Locust

AWS

Job description

Role overview

This contract position calls for a hands‑on Senior Full‑Stack Quality Engineer to own end‑to‑end software quality within an Agile scrum team supporting classroom learning products. The work spans complex front‑end applications, cloud‑based back‑end services, internally developed language models, and third‑party AI integrations, requiring both automation craftsmanship and rigorous manual judgment. The mission centers on helping millions of students through reliable, learning‑science‑driven software.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and execute automated test frameworks and regression suites spanning UI, API, and service layers, leveraging AI‑assisted authoring practices.
• Validate non‑deterministic AI features and large language model outputs against defined quality standards, including internally built models and third‑party AI tools.
• Drive test planning, execution, and release support from story validation through production deployment, owning quality decisions largely without oversight.
• Partner early with product management, design, and engineering to translate ambiguous requirements into clear, testable acceptance criteria.
• Mentor mid‑level quality engineers, lead code reviews, and act as the team's quality advocate across design and implementation discussions.
• Establish defect tracking, triage, and observability practices, applying AI tooling to accelerate detection, reproduction, and resolution workflows.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software testing and QA experience in an Agile Scrum environment.
• 5+ years building automated test frameworks using TypeScript, JavaScript, or Python, with hands‑on Playwright or WebdriverIO work.
• Broad testing capability across manual, exploratory, regression, integration, API/services, and database testing.
• Solid grasp of Git branching, pull request workflows, and incremental CI/CD deployment pipelines.
• Daily experience using AI coding assistants such as Claude Code or GitHub Copilot, paired with strong critical thinking and quality ownership.
• Clear, proactive communication, with confidence surfacing release risks, defect trends, and production issues to stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Background in EdTech, SaaS/B2B, or e‑learning/online education platforms.
• Familiarity with performance tools such as k6, JMeter, or Locust, and test management platforms like TestRail, Jira, Xray, or Zephyr.
• Experience with observability tooling such as Datadog, Sentry, or New Relic, AWS‑based test execution, and performance or accessibility testing.
• Direct experience testing AI‑driven features, LLM outputs, or ML‑backed services.