Lead QA Engineer Software Product

Lead QA Engineer Software Product

Location: San Antonio, Texas

Department: Engineering / Product

Reports To: VP of Engineering

Employment Type: Full-Time

The Role:

We're hiring a Lead QA Engineer to be the driving force behind quality across our software product. This is a leadership role with real technical depth you'll set the QA strategy, build out our testing infrastructure, mentor other testers, and work cross-functionally with engineering and product to embed quality into every stage of development. You won't just find bugs; you'll build the systems and culture that prevent them. ________________________________________ What You'll Do Leadership & Strategy
Define and own the QA strategy, roadmap, and standards across the product
Build, mentor, and grow a team of QA engineers setting expectations, reviewing work, and developing talent
Partner with engineering and product leadership to align quality goals with business priorities
Establish QA processes, documentation standards, and release readiness criteria
Drive a shift-left testing culture where quality is everyone's responsibility Technical Execution
Design and oversee comprehensive test plans covering manual, automated, API, and performance testing
Architect and maintain the automated test framework, ensuring scalability and ease of contribution
Lead API testing efforts to validate backend services, integrations, and data contracts
Own performance and load testing strategy define thresholds, run tests, and work with engineers to resolve bottlenecks
Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines for continuous quality feedback
Triage and prioritize bugs, working with engineering to ensure timely resolution
Stay hands-on this is a player-coach role and you'll be writing tests alongside your team ________________________________________ What We're Looking For
6 years of QA experience, with at least 1 2 years in a lead, senior, or team lead capacity
Strong manual testing fundamentals you know how to think like a user and break things creatively
Proven experience building and scaling automated test frameworks using Playwright, or similar
Deep expertise in API testing with tools like Postman, RestAssured, or similar
Hands-on experience with performance and load testing tools (JMeter, k6, Locust, or similar)
Experience integrating tests into CI/CD pipelines (BitBucket, Jira, etc.)
Track record of mentoring QA engineers and raising team-wide quality standards
Excellent communication skills you can influence engineers, PMs, and executives on the value of quality ________________________________________ Nice to have
Experience building a QA function from scratch at a startup
Scripting or coding proficiency in Python or JavaScript
Familiarity with test management tools (TestRail, Zephyr, or similar)
Exposure to security or accessibility testing
Experience with observability and monitoring tools to complement QA efforts