QA Automation Engineer - Maternity Cover (9 months)

Moonshot believes that marginalised people in society — including people of colour, minority ethnic communities, women, disabled people and LGBTQIA+ people — must be centred in the work we do. We strongly encourage applications from people with these identities or who are members of other communities who are currently underrepresented in our workforce. We know a diverse workforce will enable us to understand drivers behind violent extremism and online harms in an in-depth way and do better work to counter them.

About the role:

Are you passionate about technology and driven to tackle online harms? We have an exciting opportunity for a Quality Assurance Automation Engineer to join Moonshot on a fixed-term maternity cover contract, supporting our Product Engineering team.

You are someone who:

• Is passionate about producing high-quality, user-focussed software systems and maintaining excellence.
• Understands how to test software handling large-scale data collection, processing, and analysis.
• Thrives in high-performance team environments built on mutual trust and continuous improvement.
• Wants to develop both technical and leadership skills in a mission-driven organisation.
• Deeply cares about using your skills to solve the complex problems to which your software applies.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Testing user-focused products at pace in an environment that promotes agile methodologies and continuous collaboration.
• Developing test automation suites for new and existing software systems and capabilities.
• Preparation and execution of test scenarios.
• Preparation and maintenance of test data sets.
• Ensuring software is fully tested for happy-path and negative/failure scenarios.
• Participating in code reviews, providing and receiving constructive feedback.
• Writing clear and unambiguous bug and defect reports, and tracking through lifecycle.
• Reporting quality status to immediate team and product/business stakeholders.
• Assisting developers with issue investigation and reproduction.

Requirements

Essential:

• 5+ years of software testing experience, including at least 3 years writing and executing automated tests in Java and Python.
• Strong working knowledge of test automation tools for REST APIs, UIs, and/or data processing pipelines, particularly Jenkins, Selenium/Playwright, and Postman.
• Experience defining and executing test cases and scenarios.
• Ability to test software features in isolation and conduct full regression testing.
• Experience retrofitting test automation to existing systems.
• Demonstrated ability to prepare and maintain appropriate test data.
• Comfortable working with various data types (databases, files, queues, etc.).
• Experience tracking bugs and defects through their entire lifecycle.
• Experience with cloud-based software, especially AWS.
• Proficiency with DevOps and CI/CD practices (source code management, containerisation, build/deployment tools).
• Resilience in ambiguous situations with ability to approach challenges from multiple perspectives.
• Quick learner with excellent problem-solving and communication skills.
• Eligibility to work in Ireland (required and will be verified)

Desirable:

• Familiarity with and passion for countering online harms including violent extremism, disinformation, and gender-based violence.
• Well-versed in Scrum and/or Kanban methodologies.
• Experience using Jira and Confluence.
• Comfortable working with and testing data flows (processing pipelines, ETL workflows).
• Experience with performance, stress, or load testing.
• Adept at anticipating failure scenarios and testing accordingly.
• Awareness of secure-software testing practices such as OWASP.
• Familiarity with data processing algorithms.
• Proactive at spotting opportunities for improvements that unblock teams and enhance delivery capabilities.
• Relevant QA/testing certification.

Benefits

• 30 ​days​ paid​ ​leave​ ​per​ ​annum.
• Dental and Vision package.
• Private ​healthcare​ ​ package,​ including​ ​coverage​ ​for​ ​partners​ ​and​​ children.
• Employee Assistance Programme providing access to mental health support.
• 3% matched Pension contributions.

Salary: €66,500 - €76,000 Depending on skills and experience