QA Manager

Nex; San Jose (CA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package

Flexible working hours and vacation

Growth opportunities

Cutting-edge gaming tech exposure

Job summary

Nex is seeking a QA Manager to own end-to-end quality across hardware, firmware, PlayOS, and game experiences for Nex Playground. This role blends hands-on testing with shaping test strategy, release criteria, and overall quality.

You will ensure hardware revisions work seamlessly with PlayOS and games, partner with engineering and game cells to identify risk, prevent regressions, and support confident release decisions.

Qualifications

• Hands-on QA experience in system-level testing or hardware-software integration.
• Ability to design risk-based test strategies and perform exploratory testing.
• Experience validating firmware or OTA update flows with rollback scenarios.
• Skills in analyzing performance, reliability, and intermittent issues with logs and traces.

Responsibilities

• Own validation for hardware bring-up and compatibility across revisions and PlayOS versions.
• Define test strategy for firmware and PlayOS updates, including upgrade/downgrade paths.
• Establish quality gates, entry and exit criteria, and evidence-based go/no-go decisions.
• Coordinate external QA partners and vendors for deliverables.
• Communicate quality status and release risk clearly across teams.
• Champion testing practices and raise the quality bar across teams.

Skills

Hands-on QA

Risk-based testing

OTA updates

Performance analysis

Automated tests

Cross-functional comms

Tools

ADB

CI/CD

Device logs & traces

Linux debugging

Job description

Nex is on a mission to help families rediscover the joy of movement. Created by parents for parents, Nex combines technology and play to deliver fun, social, and interactive experiences powered by natural body motion, encouraging kids and adults to move more, play more, and have fun together. Nex Playground, the company's award-winning active play system, is purpose-built to get families moving year-round, with safety and privacy as core considerations in its intentional design. It is certified kidSAFE+ COPPA compliant and built to support healthy, active play for all ages and abilities.

Nex Playground features a growing library of 50+ experiences, including motion and dance games, fitness and educational experiences, and Nex Originals. Content includes collaborations with partners like Hasbro, Sesame Workshop, and NBCUniversal. Nex has been recognized by Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, TIME’s Best Inventions, and Parents’ Best Entertainment System for Families, and has earned Red Dot, IDEA, and Core77 international design awards. We encourage you to explore Have Fun and Is Motion Gaming Back?, as they offer a deeper look into our culture, values, and explain how our approach to motion gaming differs from previous generations.

Nex employees may be expected to collaborate with colleagues across different time zones. Depending on the role and location, occasional travel may also be required for company events, external meetings, and other business-related activities.

Location: Remote US

Annual salary: $150,000 - $185,000 USD (Final base salary within this range will be determined based on job-related factors, including the candidate’s experience, skills, qualifications, and geographic location)

Type: Full Time

Reports to: Director of QA

The role

We’re looking for a QA Manager to own end-to-end quality across hardware, firmware, PlayOS, and game experiences for Nex Playground. This is a role for someone who enjoys hands‑on testing and debugging while also shaping test strategy, release criteria, and the overall quality bar.

Your mission is to ensure every hardware revision works seamlessly with PlayOS and our games—delivering a stable, responsive, compatible, and delightful experience in real‑world conditions. You’ll partner closely with the engineering team and game cells to identify risk, prevent regressions, and support confident release decisions.

Key responsibilities

Hardware compatibility & system validation

• Own validation for hardware bring-up and ongoing compatibility across hardware revisions, PlayOS versions, and game builds.
• Develop and maintain risk-based test plans across EVT, DVT, and PVT—or equivalent development stages, including:
  • boot, update, rollback, and recovery flows
  • input, tracking, peripherals, and connectivity
  • long-session stability, power cycles, and intermittent failures
  • storage integrity and save-data behavior
• Maintain a clear compatibility matrix covering hardware revisions, PlayOS versions, firmware versions, and game builds.
• Partner with engineering teams to isolate hardware-software issues and verify fixes.

Firmware quality & release gating

• Own the test strategy for firmware and PlayOS updates, including upgrade and downgrade paths, interrupted updates, failure scenarios, sleep/wake behavior, backgrounding, resume, and recovery.
• Define manual validation and integrate automated checks into OTA release workflows where appropriate, covering installation, staged rollout, rollback, interruption handling, and recovery.
• Establish quality gates, entry and exit criteria, and evidence-based go/no-go recommendations for hardware and firmware releases.
• Assess release risk, track critical issues, and ensure regressions are understood before rollout.

Performance, reliability & real-world readiness

• Validate system compatibility across PlayOS and game releases, including input, tracking, performance, save data, and update-related regressions.
• Define and validate measurable quality targets such as frame-rate stability, responsiveness, latency, memory usage, thermal behavior, and crash-free sessions.
• Execute long-run, stress, and recovery testing to identify memory leaks, degradation over time, and intermittent failures.
• Test representative user environments, including network variability, display configurations, device states, user flows, and edge conditions.

Automation & tooling

• Build and maintain reliable automated regression coverage across device, firmware, OTA, system-integration, and game-compatibility workflows where appropriate.
• Integrate high-value automated checks into release workflows and make failures easy to diagnose.
• Develop lightweight tools and scripts that accelerate setup, validation, data collection, and troubleshooting.

Communication, vendor management & cross-functional leadership

• Produce actionable bug reports with clear reproduction steps, environment and build details, logs, impact, and supporting evidence.
• Drive defect triage and prioritization with engineering and product partners, particularly during release cycles.
• Manage external vendors, including scope, capacity, priorities, deliverables, acceptance criteria, quality standards, and performance.
• Communicate quality status and release risk clearly, helping teams make informed tradeoffs and decisions.
• Champion consistent testing practices and raise the quality bar across teams through influence and collaboration.

Key Requirements

• Strong hands‑on QA experience in system-level testing, firmware or OS validation, or hardware-software integration.
• Demonstrated ability to design risk-based test strategies and execute thorough exploratory testing.
• Experience validating firmware or OTA update flows, including failure handling, rollback, and recovery.
• Experience investigating performance, reliability, and intermittent issues using logs, traces, crash data, and other diagnostic evidence.
• Ability to create maintainable automated tests, tools, or scripts in at least one programming or scripting language.
• Experience coordinating external QA partners or vendors and holding deliverables to clear quality standards.
• Clear written and verbal communication, sound judgment, and strong cross-functional collaboration.

Nice-to-have

• Experience with consumer electronics, hardware bring-up, EVT/DVT/PVT, or manufacturing test concepts.
• Experience with game or platform QA, graphics and performance profiling, input or motion-tracking systems, or observability tooling.
• Familiarity with Android or Linux debugging, ADB, CI/CD systems, device logs, traces, and crash dumps.
• Experience building test infrastructure, managing device labs, or validating staged software rollouts at scale.

We Offer

• Competitive compensation package.
• Flexible working hours and vacation policy.
• Product-driven culture that treasures talents and individual growth.
• Front-row seat and hands‑on experience with cutting edge technologies in the evolving gaming field

Nex is located in San Jose, California, USA and Hong Kong. Learn more about us at https://www.nexplayground.com/about.

We encourage applications even if you don’t meet more than 50% of the requirements — we believe that experience comes in many forms!

Nex is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. This policy applies to all individuals at every stage of the employment relationship, including all current and prospective employees, and covers all employment decisions including recruitment, hiring, job assignment, promotion, compensation, benefits, training, discipline and termination.

We are committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination and harassment and to fostering an inclusive environment for all employees.