Technical QA Analyst II

Title: Technical QA Analyst II
Duration: 6 month contract
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Compensation: $60.00-75.00/hour
Work Requirement: , Holder, or Authorized to work in the U.S

We're looking for a Backend Services & Gameplay QA Engineer who can straddle both worlds:

On one side, you'll ensure the backend services powering the new player experience (account creation, progression, entitlements, first-purchase flows) are reliable and scalable.

On the other, you'll provide feedback for the designs of in-development features while also ensuring that the functionality of those gameplay features are working. Features like WASD movement and Machine Learning Bots.

You will guide an external test team to perform the same functional testing and feedback-giving that you do in order to boost efficiency.

This is a hybrid role that demands both system-level QA rigor and deep player knowledge to safeguard and shape the experiences of the next generation of players.

Responsibilities

Backend Services QA

• Guide an external test team by helping ensure the proper Test Suites have been made and executed on.

• Own quality for new player backend services: onboarding, tutorials, progression, entitlements, and rewards.

• Design and implement API and service-level test plans.

• Validate end-to-end journeys (e.g., account creation tutorial completion reward unlock client display).

• Identify opportunities to utilize automation for regression, contract, and negative testing and implement those tests.

• Debug complex service issues through logs, telemetry, and monitoring tools.

• Prepare for the release of these features by helping decide on and executing strategies that mitigate potential issues such as canary deployments, A/B testing, and load testing.

• Provide clear reporting that highlights risks and player-impacting issues.

Gameplay QA

• Provide high-skill player feedback on features like WASD movement, machine learning bots, and other unannounced experimental features.

• Ensure gameplay changes feel authentic, competitive, and consistent with intended player experiences.

• Test that gameplay changes functionally match their design intent.

• Help guide an external test team made up of high-skill players to perform these same evaluations effectively. This includes reviewing their Test Suites to ensure they've conducted proper testing.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years in Gameplay QA, SDET, or backend-focused testing roles.

• Strong knowledge of service-oriented architectures, microservices, and APIs.

• Skilled with API validation tools (Postman, Insomnia).

• Experienced with debugging distributed service issues (logs, traces, metrics).

• Competitive gaming experience at a high level, with an understanding of gameplay and onboarding friction points.

• Passion for working on player-facing features.

Desired Qualifications

• High competitive rank in relevant games is highly valued.

• Past work on a MOBA or any other live service competitive PVP game.

• Experience testing onboarding/new player experiences or live service systems.

• Familiarity with load testing, contract testing, and canary releases.

• Hands-on with observability tools (Grafana, Kibana, Datadog).

• Prior work with AI/ML-driven features in QA contexts.

• Skilled with automation frameworks (PyTest, JUnit, etc.).

Our Ideal Candidate

You're equally comfortable breaking APIs in staging as you are testing WASD movement in live environments. You bring rigor to service validation and the instincts of a high-skill player to gameplay feedback. By combining technical QA practices with deep game sense, you'll ensure new player experiences feel seamless and competitive integrity remains intact.