Senior SDET at Vouched | AI-Driven QA Career Growth

Vouched; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Remote working environment

Self-managed paid time off

11+ annual holidays

401(k)

Health care benefits

Parental leave

Job summary

Vouched, a growth-stage startup in identity verification, seeks a Senior QA/SDET to own quality across the product lifecycle. You will design and maintain test frameworks for APIs, web capture SDKs, mobile SDKs, and dashboards, while integrating tests into CI/CD.

Security, privacy, and regulatory compliance are central to QA. Proficiency with AI tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) is required, and remote work from the US is supported.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in software quality engineering with at least 3 years as SDET/test automation within a software org.
• Hands-on experience building and scaling test automation for web UIs and APIs (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, etc.).
• Experience in CI/CD pipelines and containerized/cloud environments (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Docker, GCP).
• Experience with performance/load testing tools and observability tooling to investigate failures.
• Strong security/privacy testing skills including PII handling and test data safety in regulated environments.
• Proficiency with AI-powered development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot).
• Experience working in startups and distributed teams; excellent communication.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the test strategy for the platform across unit, API, E2E, and exploratory testing.
• Design and maintain scalable automation frameworks for REST APIs, web and mobile SDKs, and dashboards.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines as quality gates; keep tests fast and reliable.
• Create safe synthetic test data for cross-country edge cases without using real personal data.
• Support compliance readiness with test evidence for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR.
• Partner with ML engineers to validate model changes using regression datasets.

Skills

SDET

Automation frameworks

CI/CD pipelines

Distributed teams

Security testing

AI tooling

Tools

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

Postman

Docker

GitHub Copilot

Claude Code

Cursor

Job description

Senior SDET at Vouched | AI-Driven QA Career Growth — Remote

A High-Impact Senior IC Role at a Growth-Stage Startup

Vouched operates in the identity verification space — a sector with strong regulatory tailwinds (KYC, AML, GDPR, HIPAA) and growing enterprise demand. As the apparent sole senior QA owner, you would have outsized influence on quality strategy, tooling, and culture — a significant career accelerator compared to being one of many QA engineers at a large company.

Compensation & Market Positioning: At $180K–$210K base plus equity, this is above-market for a Senior SDET nationally (~$140K–$170K median per industry surveys), and competitive even by San Francisco/NYC standards. The equity component at a Series A/B-stage company adds meaningful upside if Vouched scales.

Skills You’ll Build:

• AI-augmented QA workflows (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) — a rapidly differentiating skill in 2024–2025
• Security and compliance testing (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA) — highly transferable to fintech, healthtech, and enterprise SaaS
• ML model quality validation — rare and in high demand as AI products proliferate
• Mobile SDK testing at production scale across iOS and Android

Green Flags: Clear ownership scope, explicit AI tooling mandate (shows forward-thinking culture), compliance rigor that develops deep expertise. Watch for: "Small but mighty team" language suggests you may be the entire QA function — expect to build from scratch and wear multiple hats, which suits senior ICs who want ownership but can be isolating without QA peers to collaborate with.

About Vouched

At Vouched we are building a powerful identity verification platform to provide worldwide access to life's most critical services, including healthcare, financial services, rentals, and more. Companies use Vouched to verify identity while onboarding and authenticating users. We make identity verification easy with a combination of machine learning and data checks. Our customers leverage our APIs, integrations, and no-code solution to onboard customers to their systems.

What We Do

• Verify thousands of people every day across multiple countries and industries providing access to critical services
• Serve fast-growing startups, unicorns, and large enterprises, with a focus on providing fast, easy integration for developers
• Run on a modern cloud infrastructure powered by automated integration and unit testing, provisioning, deployments, monitoring, and notifications
• Operate in a highly regulated, security-sensitive space — safeguarding personal and identity data is core to everything we ship
• Drive to own the market and deliver a world-changing client and end-user experience

We are a small but mighty team looking for people who align with our values and have a strong sense of hustle, creative problem solving, grit and energy to help us scale! We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

What We Are Looking For

We are seeking a Senior QA/SDET who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment and is passionate about building quality into every release alongside a talented team. The ideal candidate blends a tester's instinct for finding what breaks with strong software engineering skills, partnering closely with engineering, product, and ML stakeholders to ensure the platform that powers identity verification for customers around the world works correctly, every time.

You will own quality across the full product lifecycle — from reviewing requirements and designs through test planning, automation, release validation, and production verification. You will build and maintain the test frameworks, automated suites, and quality gates that let our team ship quickly and with confidence across our APIs, web capture SDK, mobile SDKs, and customer dashboard.

Security and compliance are central to this role. Because Vouched handles sensitive personal and identity data, we expect you to treat security, privacy, and regulatory compliance as first-class, non-negotiable quality requirements. You will design tests that verify access controls, data handling, and auditability, help produce test evidence that supports our compliance posture across frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, etc., and ensure that test environments and test data never expose real personal information.

A critical component of this role is the fluent use of modern AI-powered tooling to accelerate test development. You will be expected to leverage tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot to rapidly produce test plans, automated tests, test data, and quality tooling. The ability to use AI tools to scaffold test suites, generate edge-case scenarios, accelerate failure triage, and build internal tooling is essential and not optional.

Experience working with distributed teams, strong written and verbal communication skills, and a bias toward action are essential.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own the test strategy for the Vouched platform, balancing unit, integration, API, end-to-end, and exploratory testing to maximize risk coverage and release speed.
• Design, build, and maintain scalable test automation frameworks for our REST APIs, web capture SDK, mobile SDKs (iOS and Android), and customer dashboard.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines as quality gates, keeping suites fast, reliable, and free of flaky tests so every change ships with confidence.
• Build and curate safe, synthetic test data (ID documents, selfies, and identity records) that exercises edge cases across countries and document types without using real personal data.
• Test for security and privacy: authentication and authorization, input validation, PII handling and redaction, and data retention, partnering with security on vulnerability findings.
• Support compliance readiness by producing traceable test evidence and change-validation records for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR (HIPAA a plus).
• Drive performance, load, and reliability testing to ensure APIs and processing pipeline meet latency and throughput targets at scale.
• Partner with ML engineers to validate model and pipeline changes using regression datasets and accuracy benchmarks before they reach production.
• Own release validation and sign-off; triage, reproduce, and root-cause defects, including production issues reported by customers, and turn every escaped bug into lasting automated coverage.
• Define and report on quality metrics (defect escape rate, automation coverage, flakiness, time-to-detect) and use them to drive continuous improvement.
• Leverage AI-powered tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and others) to accelerate test creation, test data generation, and failure triage.
• Champion a culture of quality across engineering by reviewing designs and pull requests for testability and mentoring engineers on testing best practices.
• Continuously evaluate and adopt emerging AI-powered tools and workflows to improve test speed, coverage, and reliability.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in software quality engineering, including at least 3 years as an SDET or test automation engineer within a software engineering organization.
• Hands-on experience building and scaling test automation frameworks for web UIs and APIs (Playwright, Cypress, WebdriverIO, Selenium, Jest, Postman, or similar).
• Experience integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or similar) and working with containerized and cloud environments (Docker, GCP preferred).
• Experience with performance and load testing tools (k6, Gatling, JMeter, or similar) and observability tools (Datadog or equivalent) to investigate failures.
• Solid understanding of security and privacy testing: authentication and authorization, OWASP Top 10, input validation, and safe handling of PII in test environments.
• Experience working in regulated environments and supporting compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, including test evidence and audit readiness.
• Proficiency with AI-powered development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent; demonstrated ability to accelerate test development with them.
• Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills across the stack, from client to API to database.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to write clear test plans, bug reports, and quality reports.
• Experience working in a startup environment is required.
• Experience managing or collaborating with distributed teams is essential.
• Familiarity with identity verification, computer vision, or AI/ML-based solutions, or with testing ML model quality, is a plus.

Compensation

Base salary range: $180,000 – $210,000 USD annually, depending on experience and leveling. This role is also eligible for equity compensation and company benefits.

• Equity compensation
• Remote working environment
• Self-managed paid time off
• 11+ annual company holidays
• 401(k)
• Health Care Benefits: Medical, Vision, Dental
• Parental leave

Our Commitment

We are committed to providing an environment where everyone receives equal consideration and treatment regardless of gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, age, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, HIV/AIDS/Hepatitis C status, genetic information, marital status, domestic partner status, military or veteran status, height, weight, and any other protected category under the law.

This is a remote role. However, you must be based in the US (US work authorization is required).

Is this role truly remote, or are there office requirements? This is a fully remote role with no office requirement. However, you must be based in the United States with valid US work authorization — the role is not open to international candidates or those outside the US. What is the salary range for this Senior QA/SDET position? The base salary range is $180,000–$210,000 USD annually, depending on experience and leveling. The role also includes equity compensation and a full benefits package. What programming languages and frameworks are required for this role? You need strong skills in at least one of TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Java, or Kotlin/Swift, plus hands-on experience with frameworks like Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or similar, and mobile testing tools like Appium, XCUITest, or Espresso. Is experience with AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot or Cursor required? Yes — proficiency with AI-powered development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent) is explicitly listed as a required qualification, not optional. The role expects you to use these tools to accelerate test creation, data generation, and failure triage. What compliance frameworks will I work with in this role? You will support compliance readiness across SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR at minimum, producing traceable test evidence and audit-ready documentation. HIPAA experience is listed as a plus.

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