QA Lead for FinTech & E‑commerce Quality Strategy

Sound Decisions; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Sound Decisions is seeking a QA Engineer to lead quality assurance across our software products, owning test strategy and expanding automation while partnering with engineering, product, implementation, support, and customers to raise the quality bar.

You will design and execute test plans, drive a shift-left mindset, track defects with detailed reproduction steps, and ensure coverage from happy paths to edge cases, integrating tests into CI/CD workflows.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software quality assurance, including API-driven and non-API software environments.
• Experience leading or coordinating QA efforts, with the judgment to balance hands-on testing work and process improvement.
• Strong FinTech and e-commerce domain knowledge.
• Strong test planning, exploratory testing, regression testing, and defect management skills.
• Strong problem-solving ability with excellent attention to detail and the ability to investigate issues from multiple perspectives.
• Ability to move comfortably between detailed issue analysis and higher-level process design.
• Experience with Jira or similar issue-tracking tools.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain technical issues, quality risks, and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the overall QA strategy, including manual, regression, exploratory, and automated testing approaches.
• Design and execute test plans for new products, enhancements, and existing functionality to validate quality, usability, and reliability.
• Lead a shift-left quality mindset by participating early in planning, refinement, and requirements discussions so issues are identified before release.
• Identify, document, prioritize, and track defects with enough detail for engineering teams to reproduce, isolate, and resolve issues quickly.
• Retest resolved defects and partner with developers to confirm fixes fully address root causes and edge cases.
• Build robust coverage across happy path, non-happy path, and true edge-case scenarios.
• Drive adoption and expansion of test automation, including integrating automated tests into delivery workflows and CI/CD practices where appropriate.
• Provide recommendations to improve regression coverage, test efficiency, tooling, and overall quality processes.
• Monitor and report on issue trends, testing progress, quality risks, and resolution metrics to support better planning and decision-making.
• Partner cross-functionally with product, engineering, implementation, support, and customers to ensure test plans reflect real-world usage and business impact.

Skills

Test planning

Exploratory testing

Regression testing

Defect management

API testing

Communication

Independent & collaborative work

FinTech domain knowledge

E-commerce domain knowledge

Tools

Jira

Git

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Sound Decisions is seeking a QA Engineer to lead quality assurance across our software products, owning test strategy and expanding automation while partnering with engineering, product, implementation, support, and customers to raise the quality bar.

You will design and execute test plans, drive a shift-left mindset, track defects with detailed reproduction steps, and ensure coverage from happy paths to edge cases, integrating tests into CI/CD workflows.