Lead QA Automation Engineer — Remote, High-Impact

Dealer Alchemist; Chantilly (VA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote - work from anywhere in the U.S

Unlimited PTO - performance-based Flex

401(k) with employer matching

Comprehensive healthcare - medical, d

Job summary

Dealer Alchemist is seeking a QA Automation Engineer to establish, own, and lead the automated testing practice across our products. This is a foundational, high-autonomy leadership role for someone who can define a quality strategy from the ground up, standardize tooling, build the workflows, mentor engineers on testability, and operationalize release readiness with minimal supervision.

There is no dedicated QA function today - you will build it.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional QA / test automation experience for modern web applications, including demonstrated ownership or lead-level scope.
• Strong Playwright experience (or equivalent E2E framework).
• Proficiency in JavaScript / TypeScript sufficient to build and maintain automation frameworks, helpers, fixtures, and CI integrations.
• Strong front-end understanding: browser behavior, DOM / network debugging, auth / session flows, caching, and reliable selector strategies.
• Working knowledge of back-end concepts: REST APIs, request / response debugging, and database literacy for test setup and validation.
• Experience with API testing (Postman / Swagger plus code-driven checks).
• Experience with CI/CD and Git-based workflows (e.g., GitHub Actions).
• Demonstrated ability to operate independently - define priorities, build systems, and drive outcomes without a pre-defined backlog.
• Strong written communication and the ability to drive clarity in ambiguous environments.
• Must reside in the U.S. and be authorized to work without sponsorship.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end QA strategy for web apps including test pyramid, coverage targets, release gates, and ownership expectations.
• Build and lead automated test suites with Playwright and integration/API checks.
• Integrate testing into the CI/CD pipeline with PR gating, regression suites, and release-branch validation.
• Establish test data and environment strategy with fixtures, mocks vs real services, and parallelization.
• Stand up performance/load testing and coordinate with engineering on bottlenecks.
• Define and evangelize the QA-ownership model and coach developers on testable code.
• Apply automation-first thinking to reduce manual overhead and build workflow automations.
• Perform targeted manual/exploratory testing and document risk for go/no-go decisions.
• Track quality metrics such as pass rate, runtime, flake rate, and regression effectiveness.

Skills

QA leadership

Playwright

JavaScript/TypeScript

Front-end understanding

API testing

REST APIs

CI/CD / GitHub Actions

Independent worker

Communication

US work authorization

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

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Job description

Dealer Alchemist is seeking a QA Automation Engineer to establish, own, and lead the automated testing practice across our products. This is a foundational, high-autonomy leadership role for someone who can define a quality strategy from the ground up, standardize tooling, build the workflows, mentor engineers on testability, and operationalize release readiness with minimal supervision.

There is no dedicated QA function today - you will build it.