QA Engineer Lead

Who we are:

We are a leader in fraud prevention and AML compliance. Our platform uses device intelligence, behavior biometrics, machine learning, and AI to stop fraud before it happens. Today, over 300 banks, retailers, and fintechs worldwide use Sardine to stop identity fraud, payment fraud, account takeovers, and social engineering scams. We have raised $145M from world-class investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Activant, Visa, Experian, FIS, and Google Ventures.

Our culture:

• We have hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, and Toronto. However, we maintain a remote-first work culture. #WorkFromAnywhere

• We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation.

• We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.

Location: Remote - Brazil. To be considered for this position, you must reside in one of the following cities:

• São Paulo: São Paulo, Campinas, São José dos Campos

• Rio de Janeiro: Rio de Janeiro

• Minas Gerais: Belo Horizonte

• Paraná: Curitiba

• Santa Catarina: Florianópolis

About the Role

We're looking for a hands-on QA Engineering Lead to shape and scale Sardine’s end-to-end quality function - spanning automation, manual testing, frameworks, and strategy. You’ll lead a growing team of QA engineers while also contributing technically to ensure our products are robust, scalable, and reliable. This is a 70% IC and 30% management role.

This high-impact, cross-functional role involves close collaboration with Product, Sales, and Engineering. This role is ideally suited for someone who thrives in a high-ownership environment, is motivated to build scalable systems, and wants to shape the quality function from the ground up.

What you’ll be doing

70% IC Scope + 30% Manager

• Own and evolve the QA function across our products, including test framework, test automation, manual QA practices, and continuous integration

• Build a robust, scalable, and maintainable automated test framework for backend APIs and frontend applications

• Develop test plans, cases, and data strategies for complex features across distributed systems.

• Partner with engineers to shift testing left and embed quality into the dev lifecycle

• Partner with DevOps and Engineering to embed quality gates into our CI/CD and release pipelines

• Establish and track quality KPIs such as defect density, regression rates, and test coverage.

• Promote a culture of quality and champion QA best practices across the organization.
  Lead and mentor QA engineers while contributing hands-on to test development.

What you’ll bring

• 6+ years of experience in QA or software engineering roles with a strong testing focus, ideally in high-growth startup environments

• 2+ years of formal management or team lead experience, including mentoring QA engineers

• Experience working with distributed or international teams

• Expertise in building end-to-end test automation for APIs, web frontend and mobile SDKs

• Proficiency with modern test frameworks (e.g., Cypress, Selenium, Playwright)

• Comfort writing tests in languages like Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript

• Solid understanding of CI/CD workflows and how to integrate automated tests

• Strong communicator with a bias toward action, ownership, and continuous improvement

Compensation: Base pay range of 360,000 – 455,000 BRL + Series C equity with tremendous upside potential + Attractive benefits

The compensation offered for this role will depend on various factors, including the candidate's location, qualifications, work history, and interview performance, and may differ from the stated range.

Benefits we offer:

• Generous compensation in cash and equity

• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested

• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture

• Flexible paid time off, Year-end break, Self care days off

• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific

• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific

• MacBook Pro delivered to your door

• One-time stipend to set up a home office — desk, chair, screen, etc.

• Monthly meal stipend

• Monthly social meet-up stipend

• Annual health and wellness stipend

• Annual Learning stipend

• Unlimited access to an expert financial advisory

Join a fast-growing company with world-class professionals from around the world. If you are seeking a meaningful career, you found the right place, and we would love to hear from you.

To learn more about how we process your personal information and your rights in regards to your personal information as an applicant and Sardine employee, please visit our Applicant and Worker Privacy Notice.