We are seeking a Senior QA Automation Engineer to join our Quality Engineering team and help ensure the reliability, security, and overall quality of our cybersecurity products. You will play a key role in defining, leading, and scaling quality assurance across our platform, with a strong emphasis on test automation.
This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role. You will lead our web application test automation efforts, designing and evolving automated testing solutions with Playwright and JavaScript, and integrating automated testing throughout the software development lifecycle. You will also mentor junior QA and automation engineers and influence engineering practices across teams.
Requirements
QA Strategy & Leadership
- Lead the design and execution of QA strategies, frameworks, and automated test plans across multiple products
- Identify high-value opportunities for automation and help define the team's automation strategy and roadmap
- Participate in requirements and design reviews to identify quality risks and testability concerns early in the development lifecycle
- Define meaningful quality metrics and provide visibility into automation coverage, reliability, and product quality
- Continuously evaluate testing tools, techniques, and approaches, and drive improvement of QA processes aligned with engineering goals
Test Automation & Infrastructure
- Lead the design, development, and ongoing improvement of our automated testing framework using Playwright and JavaScript
- Develop reliable, maintainable, and reusable automated tests for browser-based cybersecurity applications, with coverage across backend, frontend, and infrastructure components
- Establish and promote automation architecture, coding standards, design patterns, and testing best practices
- Own and enhance CI/CD-integrated testing infrastructure, including quality gates and feedback mechanisms, for consistent validation across environments
- Review existing automation and improve its reliability, maintainability, execution speed, and coverage
- Diagnose and resolve flaky tests, automation failures, and complex application or environment issues
- Analyze test results to distinguish product defects from automation, environment, and test-data issues
- Contribute to our growing suite of automated security checks (e.g., SAST/DAST and dependency scanning) in CI/CD pipelines
Team Enablement & Collaboration
- Mentor junior QA and automation engineers, conduct code reviews, and provide technical guidance
- Partner with software engineers, product managers, security teams, and QA engineers to develop effective test strategies for new features and releases
- Advocate for quality engineering practices and help shift testing earlier in the development lifecycle
- Promote a culture of quality and accountability
What You Bring
Required:
- 5+ years of experience in Software Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering, Software Development Engineering in Test (SDET), or a similar role
- Strong experience designing and developing automated tests for modern web applications
- Hands-on experience with Playwright, preferably using JavaScript or TypeScript, with emphasis on designing scalable automation frameworks rather than solely creating individual test cases (experience with Cypress, Selenium, Jest, or similar is a plus)
- Strong understanding of software testing methodologies, including functional, integration, regression, end-to-end, and negative testing
- Strong experience integrating automated tests with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI) and source-control workflows
- Experience testing complex applications involving role-based access controls, permissions, multi-tenant environments, or security policies
- Experience mentoring junior engineers and providing constructive technical feedback through code reviews
- Strong communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally
Preferred:
- Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, or similar technologies
- Experience in security-critical, high-availability, or infrastructure-heavy systems
- Familiarity with API security, authentication flows, and data protection practices
- Experience leading QA initiatives in Agile environments
- Familiarity with security testing tools (e.g., OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, SAST/DAST)
What Success Looks Like:
Success means moving beyond simply increasing the number of automated tests. You will build an automation ecosystem that engineers trust: tests that are reliable, maintainable, appropriately scoped, and give rapid feedback when something goes wrong. You will become a technical leader within the QA organization, helping decide what to automate, how to automate it, and how automation fits into the broader development process, while growing the engineers around you.
You as a Person
- Knowledge: Deep expertise in QA automation and CI/CD workflows
- Skill: Builds scalable testing systems and mentors others in quality practices
- Ability: Influences teams and drives improvements in product quality
You in the Role
- Autonomy: Owns and evolves QA and test automation across multiple products
- Complexity: Solves complex quality challenges across the full stack
- Impact: Ensures consistent, high-quality product releases
Extra Credit
- QA certifications such as ISTQB, or security certifications such as OSCP, CEH, or CSSLP
- Experience with SaaS platforms or networking-intensive solutions
- Hands-on experience with cloud security and compliance (FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO 27001)
Benefits
Why Dispel/Benefits
At Dispel you’ll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.
- Base salary: $90,000 – $120,000
- 401(k) with company match
- Generous paid time off and holidays
- Performance bonus and equity eligible
- Remote work
- Medical, vision, dental insurance
New Zealand