QA Automation Engineer

Position Overview:

Anaqua is looking for a QA Automation Engineer to own the quality strategy for our Platform & Microservices team — someone who builds robust, scalable test automation that gives the team confidence to ship fast.

You will design test frameworks from the ground up, automate across UI, API, and service layers, integrate quality gates into CI/CD pipelines, and champion a shift-left culture where defects are caught early and quality is everyone’s responsibility.

You'll love this job if you like to:

UI & E2E TEST AUTOMATION

• Playwright (preferred) / Cypress — building and maintaining E2E test suites for web applications using page object model and modern patterns.
• Cross-Browser Testing — cross-browser and responsive testing across desktop and mobile viewports.
• Visual Regression — visual regression testing to catch unintended UI changes (Percy, Chromatic, or equivalent).
• Test Stability — handling dynamic content, waits, retries, and flaky test mitigation strategies.

API & MICROSERVICE TESTING

• REST API Testing — automated testing of RESTful APIs — request/response validation, schema validation, authentication flows.
• Contract Testing — contract testing between microservices to catch breaking changes early (Pact or equivalent).
• gRPC Testing — testing gRPC services — protocol buffer validation, streaming endpoints, and error handling.
• Event-Driven Testing — testing event-driven flows — message queue consumers/producers, async processing validation.
• API Tooling — tools like Postman, REST Assured, or custom HTTP clients for exploratory and automated API testing.

TEST FRAMEWORK DESIGN

• Framework Architecture — designing modular, maintainable, and reusable test automation frameworks from scratch.
• Test Design Patterns — data-driven and keyword-driven testing approaches for scalable test coverage.
• Test Data — test data management — fixtures, factories, seed data, and environment-specific configurations.
• Parallel Execution — parallel test execution and test sharding for faster feedback cycles.

PROGRAMMING & SCRIPTING

• TypeScript / JavaScript — strong programming in TypeScript or JavaScript for test automation codebases.
• Python — Python for scripting, data validation, and utility automation.
• Code Quality — clean code practices in test code — readability, DRY principles, proper abstractions.
• Git — Git version control, branching, and collaborative code review for test repositories.

CI/CD & PIPELINE INTEGRATION

• Pipeline Integration — integrating automated tests as quality gates in CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI preferred).
• Containerized Testing — test execution in containerized environments using Docker.
• Reporting & Metrics — test reporting, dashboards, and trend analysis for test pass rates, flaky tests, and coverage.
• Environments — clear understanding of Dev, QA, Staging, Pre-Production, and Production environments.

PERFORMANCE & NON-FUNCTIONAL TESTING

• Performance Testing — load testing and stress testing for microservices (k6, JMeter, Gatling, or equivalent).
• Performance Analysis — identifying bottlenecks, memory leaks, and response time degradation under load.
• Security Testing — basic security testing awareness — OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, injection attacks, auth bypass.

AI & MODERN TOOLING

• AI-assisted test generation and maintenance using AI-native IDEs and tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot).
• Leveraging AI for test data generation, defect triaging, and flaky test analysis.

SDLC & AGILE

• Agile delivery — Scrum, Kanban, or continuous delivery; active participation in all ceremonies.
• Jira proficiency — Epics, Features, User Stories, Bugs, sprint planning, release planning.
• Full SDLC understanding — requirements analysis, test planning, execution, defect lifecycle, and sign-off.
• Quality workflow — definition of done, acceptance criteria validation, and release readiness assessment.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS & MINDSET

• Shift-left champion — proactively embeds quality into every stage of the development lifecycle.
• Strong analytical skills — requirement understanding, impact analysis, and risk-based test prioritization.
• Customer-centric — thinks from the end-user perspective when designing test scenarios.
• Quick learner — rapidly absorbs new domains, tools, and technologies.

What you'll need to be successful:

• 5+ years of experience in QA automation
• Selenium experience for legacy or cross-platform browser automation.
• Database testing — SQL queries for data validation (PostgreSQL / SQL Server).
• Accessibility testing (WCAG compliance, axe-core, or Lighthouse).
• Mobile testing experience (Appium or equivalent).
• Chaos engineering or resilience testing for microservices.
• Experience with test management tools (TestRail, Zephyr, or equivalent).
• Background in brand protection, IP enforcement, or digital investigation domains.
• Experience in enterprise SaaS domains.