Quality Assurance Engineering Lead

Future Secure AI; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work environment

Career growth

Job summary

Future Secure AI in Austin, TX, is seeking a Quality Assurance Engineering Lead to build and lead our QA team while staying hands-on with testing. This player-coach role is roughly 70% people leadership and 30% individual contributor work, with expectations to scale as the team grows.

The ideal candidate will balance hiring and mentoring with hands-on testing on priority releases, and will own QA strategy, test plans, and automation initiatives while integrating QA into CI/CD pipelines and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS or related field.
• 6+ years of software QA experience with 2+ years in QA leadership.
• Hands-on testing experience (manual & automated) with Selenium/JUnit/TestNG.
• Experience with CI/CD tooling and integrating QA into pipelines.
• Solid Agile/Scrum fundamentals and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Build and grow the QA team, including hiring and onboarding.
• Manage day-to-day operations, performance reviews, and career development.
• Perform hands-on testing on priority features and releases.
• Own QA strategy, test plans, and roadmap alignment with product/engineering.
• Drive test automation adoption and tooling improvements.
• Integrate QA into CI/CD pipelines with DevOps.
• Report quality metrics to leadership and lead root-cause analysis.
• Represent QA in cross-functional planning and reviews.

Skills

Hands-on testing

Automation frameworks

Selenium

JUnit

TestNG

CI/CD

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Agile/Scrum

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Jenkins

GitLab CI

CI/CD tooling

Job description

About the Company

At Future Secure AI, we're building something genuinely new - and we're looking for people bold enough to build it with us. We work at the frontier of AI, tackling big, real-world problems for global enterprises across multiple industries, armed with state-of-the-art technology and a culture that prizes courage, rigor, and relentless curiosity. Our BRAVER values aren't just words on a wall - they describe the kind of people we are and the standard we hold ourselves to every day. Our leadership team is entrepreneurial, experienced, and accessible, with an open-door policy that means you'll never be just a number here. We invest seriously in your growth because we know our success depends on yours. If you're ready to work alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry, push into uncharted territory, and do work that genuinely matters, Future Secure AI is the place for you.

About the Role

We are hiring a Quality Assurance Engineering Lead to build and lead our quality assurance team while staying hands-on with testing. This is a player-coach role by design: roughly 70% people leadership (hiring, developing, and managing QA engineers) and 30% individual contributor work (hands-on testing on priority releases). As the team scales, we expect this balance to shift toward more people leadership. The ideal candidate wants both the impact of building a team and the satisfaction of staying technically close to the product.

Responsibilities

• Build and grow the QA team, including hiring, onboarding, and setting performance expectations
• Manage day-to-day team operations: workload distribution, 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development
• Personally execute hands-on testing (functional, regression, performance, security) on priority features or releases, staying close to the product
• Own QA strategy and roadmap, aligning testing priorities with product and engineering goals
• Design and maintain test plans, working directly with development teams to ensure requirements are covered
• Drive adoption of automation frameworks and tooling to improve testing efficiency and reduce manual overhead
• Own QA's integration into CI/CD pipelines, partnering with DevOps to optimize test execution and feedback loops
• Track and report quality metrics (defect escape rate, test coverage, release readiness) to leadership
• Lead root-cause analysis on significant quality escapes and drive process improvements
• Represent QA in cross-functional planning and architecture reviews, advocating for testability and quality standards

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field
• 6+ years of experience in software QA, with 2+ years directly managing a QA team (hiring, performance reviews, staffing)
• Comfortable operating as both a manager and an individual contributor, with a genuine interest in staying technically hands-on rather than moving fully into managementStrong proficiency in manual and automated testing, with hands-on experience in tools such as Selenium, JUnit, TestNG
• Experience with CI/CD tooling (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI) and integrating QA into deployment pipelines
• Solid understanding of Agile/Scrum methodologies
• Strong people leadership skills: hiring, mentoring, conflict resolution, performance management
• Excellent problem-solving and communication skills, able to translate quality risk for technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to prioritize and switch between strategic and hands-on work in a fast-paced environment

Why Join Us?

• A high-performance culture
• State-of-the-art technology
• Experience world-class leadership
• Scale of impact and purpose
• A competitive salary and a huge growth trajectory
• Work with the best in the industry
• Flexible work environment
• Diversity and creativity

Disclaimer: We do not wish to be contacted by recruitment agencies. Our hiring process is managed in-house and the best way for candidates to express interest is by applying with your resume through our company website.

Future Secure AI Privacy Policy

At Future Secure AI, we are committed to protecting your privacy and adhering to the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Our Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, share, and protect your personal data when you visit our website at www.futuresecure.ai (the "Website") and use our services.