Senior QA Chapter Lead - Embedded & Standards

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

Job summary

Watu, a fintech platform, seeks a QA Chapter Lead who will act as an embedded QA in one squad while also leading QA standards across multiple squads. The role is not a direct people manager but a technical lead driving test strategy, automation, and quality gates.

You will own the automation framework, mentor new QA engineers, and run a monthly QA Guild to align across the engineering function. Strong backend/API testing skills and Java experience are essential.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software QA experience with at least 2 years in a Lead QA role where you drove test strategy across more than one team.
• Strong automation engineering skills – you write test code to production standards and CI reliability.
• Experience with API testing at depth: REST, contract testing, and integration test design.
• Experience defining and maintaining QA standards in an Agile squad environment.
• Experience in Java-based backend environments and reading Java code.

Responsibilities

• Embed as QA engineer in your squad and own acceptance criteria with the Product Owner.
• Write and maintain automated test suites across unit, integration, and E2E domains.
• Own the Definition of Done quality gate for your squad.
• Define and maintain QA standards for the function: test pyramid, tooling, naming, coverage, and CI gate configuration.
• Onboard new QA engineers into the chapter and define onboarding processes.
• Run the monthly QA Guild and align tooling and frameworks across squads.
• Own the automation framework selection and evolution and maintain documentation.
• Report QA health metrics to Head of Engineering.

Skills

Lead QA

Automation engineering

API testing

Agile QA

Java backend

Job description

Watu, a fintech platform, seeks a QA Chapter Lead who will act as an embedded QA in one squad while also leading QA standards across multiple squads. The role is not a direct people manager but a technical lead driving test strategy, automation, and quality gates.

You will own the automation framework, mentor new QA engineers, and run a monthly QA Guild to align across the engineering function. Strong backend/API testing skills and Java experience are essential.