Senior QA Automation Engineer (Operationalize)

Job Summary

• Product knowledge - completely understanding the product and its functionalities.
• Engineering domain - increasing the test coverage or solving their gaps, understanding its architecture and design, and finding opportunities for improvement or possible issues.
• Process audit - identifying quality issues we can prevent with simple changes in our software development process.

Responsibilities:

• Work to maintain and improve our automated test suites in RSpec, Jest, Playwright, and Cypress, as well as to set up automated test suites for new products or tools from scratch.
• Estimate, prioritize, plan, and coordinate testing activities.
• Identify, record, document thoroughly, and track bugs.
• Review the work of your colleagues from white box (PR reviews) and black box (manual and exploratory) testing perspectives.
• Improve your team’s processes, brainstorm ideas, and communicate your status and progress.
• Collaborate closely with users throughout the preliminary planning phase, ensuring a holistic understanding of the product to plan and deliver new features effectively.
• Contribute to writing Acceptance Criteria and Definition of Done for the team’s features.
• Review requirements, specifications, and technical design documents to provide timely and meaningful feedback and identify corner cases we must address appropriately.
• Track quality assurance metrics, like defect densities and open defect counts.
• Stay up-to-date with new testing tools and test strategies.
• Development experience, including design, implementation, documentation, and maintenance of test automation in Ruby on Rails, React, and NodeJS (a plus).
• Mentor other people, provide feedback, and grow as a part of the team.
• Actively participate in meetings, including Scrum meetings, squad meetings, pair programming sessions, etc.

In the first week, expect to:

• Begin your onboarding and integration into Toptal.
• Get familiar with our product portfolio and team structure.
• Learn our processes.
• Get acquainted with our tech stack.

In the first month, expect to:

• Implement your first automated tests.
• Have strong knowledge of Toptal’s business and our team’s mission and vision.
• Start working on regular team tasks and become familiar with the business domain.
• Attend regular meetings, like technical calls, retrospectives, and the monthly Engineering All-Hands meeting.

In the first three months, expect to:

• Start contributing to the technical topics and understand the application and the general testing system.
• Learn and take part in the utilization of the latest testing technologies.
• Deliver value in regular cadence.
• Get comfortable with our team’s daily work routine.
• Review code written by your colleagues and identify possible areas for improvement, while exercising discretion and independent judgment.
• Be ready to propose improvements to Toptal’s processes and codebase.

In the first six months, expect to:

• Develop automated tests to ensure that our products flawlessly support our business and behave at sky-high quality standards.
• Set up the automated test suite for our new products and tools from scratch.
• Be actively engaged in developing new features your team works on.

In the first year, expect to:

• Become a champion of new ideas that will thrive in achieving the purpose of our company, squad, and team while ensuring the quality culture we value the most.
• Become a key team member, be responsible for the QA and overall testing activities, and help others inside and outside the team.
• Develop your team’s trust to make strategic decisions regarding tools or methods involved in the QA process.
• Significantly increase the automated test coverage of our team’s products, including end-to-end and integration tests; help your teammates with manual and exploratory testing when necessary.
• Deeply understand Toptal’s technical stack, collaboration rituals, processes, performance, and future work.
• Determine what your career path looks like at Toptal.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of Quality Assurance and test automation experience, with a focus on developing end-to-end tests for both monolithic and distributed systems. Solid hands-on experience with automated testing tools for frontend and backend applications.
• RSpec, Jest, and Cypress are your daily bread and butter.
• Familiarity with Playwright, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript/TypeScript, and GraphQL.
• Full autonomy in daily work; unblock yourself by finding the right people or help.
• Hands-on experience with both white box and black box testing.
• Hands-on experience with different tools - Testing tools, Version Control systems (Git), Test Management Software, Bug Tracking Software (Jira), CI tools (Jenkins, Github Actions, etc.), Docker, Kubernetes (a plus), and Google Cloud Platform (a plus).
• Critical thinking and enthusiastic skepticism.
• Team player - avoiding solo performances and helping others.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.
• Bonus points for hands-on experience testing Slack bots and Jira add-ons.
• Experience or familiarity with Product Management, including understanding user needs and helping plan and deliver features, is a plus.
• A holistic understanding of the product and users’ needs, ideally from a Product Management perspective, is a plus. Prior experience in a Product Manager role is beneficial but not required.
• You should be a proactive problem-solver and take ownership of your work, collaborating closely with the team to achieve high-quality results.
• You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.