The posting
THE ROLE We're looking to contract a remote senior QA Analyst resource for 12 hours per week to support a large-scale laboratory and order management platform used in regulated scientific work that is expected to continue through 2027.
This is the first QA hire on the engagement, which means you will shape how testing works here rather than inherit someone else's process.
WHAT MAKES THIS ROLE DIFFERENT Our engineers write their own unit, integration, and end-to-end Playwright tests, and every story's acceptance criteria are automated before that story is marked done. So you will not spend your days re-running scripted checks against a criteria list. That is already covered.
Your job is the part automation cannot do. Two halves:
Finding what nobody specified. The odd input, the wrong order of operations, the state left behind by the last action, the thing that is technically correct per the spec and obviously wrong to a human.
Confirming it matches the design. You own the comparison of what was built against the approved designs, not just against the written criteria. Spacing, states, error handling, and correct use of the component library are yours to catch. On this engagement that check does not sit with a separate design reviewer, so if you do not find it, it ships.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Four or more years testing software in a team that ships continuously.
- Real exploratory testing instinct. You find things that aren't on the list, and you can explain how you found them.
- Comfortable writing SQL and checking data at the source rather than inferring what happened from the screen. A large share of this system is data moving between places, and we need that verified where it lands.
- A good eye for visual detail, and comfort working from design files as the reference rather than waiting to be told what correct looks like.
- Clear, reproducible defect reports. This matters more than any tool on your résumé.
- Comfort reading acceptance criteria critically and asking the question everyone else skipped.
- Able to work directly with business users and subject-matter experts without an intermediary.
Requirements
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Test each story as it's built, against its acceptance criteria and well beyond them, inside the sprint rather than after it.
- Validate delivered work against the approved designs, including the states that are easy to skip: empty, loading, error, and edge-case content.
- Verify data directly in the database where it matters, including checks on data migrated from the legacy platform.
- Own exploratory testing of new functionality and write up what you find clearly enough that an engineer can act on it without a follow-up conversation.
- Work directly with our BA and design leads, who provide a short independent review at the close of each domain rather than story by story.
- Help run business-stakeholder acceptance sessions at the end of each build wave, walking subject-matter experts through completed functionality.
- Push back on acceptance criteria that aren't testable. Under our process, vague criteria are a defect in their own right.
NICE TO HAVE
- Test automation experience, particularly Playwright. You would have the chance to contribute to our end-to-end suite alongside the engineers, and to grow into owning parts of it.
- Any exposure to performance or load testing. We have that work coming and would rather grow it internally than contract it out.
- Familiarity with Figma or a similar design tool, enough to read specs and inspect components.
- Comfort reading application code well enough to see what a change touched. Not required, and straightforward to grow into here.
- Domain background in laboratory, scientific, manufacturing, or order management software.
- Experience testing systems that integrate with an ERP.
- Familiarity with Asana.
- Automation experience is a genuine plus, not a filter. If you are strong at finding defects and curious about automation, we would rather hire you and invest in the tooling side.
