Quality Assurance Engineer

About the role

You will join a small senior crew embedded inside a client organisation, usually a bank, telco, health system or energy operator. You will work in their repository, on their CI, in their on-call rotation. The systems are consequential and the constraints are real: regulatory scrutiny, legacy integration, and a business that cannot tolerate a bad release.

Quality here is not a gate at the end. You will shape how the team tests, what gets automated, and what is deliberately left to human judgement — and you will be listened to when you say something is not ready.

The team you join

You will be the quality voice on an embedded crew, working with engineers rather than testing after them.

What you will do

• Design the test strategy for a product team, and own the automated suite that enforces it.
• Build and maintain end-to-end and integration tests that run on every change.
• Work with engineers to make code testable, rather than testing around it afterwards.
• Define what "done" means for a release, including the regulatory evidence required.
• Investigate production defects to root cause and close the gap that let them through.

Minimum qualifications

• Four or more years testing software that real people depend on.
• Strong automation skills in a mainstream language, and comfort in CI pipelines.
• The judgement to know what is worth automating and what is not.
• Experience testing integrations and data flows, not only user interfaces.
• The confidence to hold a release when the evidence is not there.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in a regulated environment such as banking, health or telecoms.
• Performance or load testing experience.
• Exposure to accessibility testing.

Your first three months

1. Understand what currently reaches production untested, and say so.
2. Get a meaningful automated suite running in CI within a month.
3. Define what evidence a release needs, including for the auditors.
4. By month three, be the reason releases are boring.

Compensation and benefits

Rates are agreed per engagement and depend on scope and seniority. We discuss numbers openly on the first call, before you spend time on a practical.

• Rates are agreed per engagement and discussed openly on the first call, before you spend time on a practical.
• Remote across Africa, with on-site weeks where the engagement calls for them.
• Work embedded inside regulated institutions, on systems with real consequences, alongside senior engineers who review your work and expect you to review theirs.
• Small crews and direct access to partners, with no layers between you and the decisions.
• Long relationships. We would rather work with the same capable people across engagements than hire for a single project.
• Straight answers. We tell you what we can and cannot offer before you commit, and we do not promise what we cannot deliver.

How we interview

The whole process is normally two to three weeks, and we work around your current job.

1. Application review. A partner reads every application. You hear back either way, usually within two working days.
2. Intro call, 45 minutes. Your background, what you want next, and honest answers about the work, the rate and the constraints.
3. Practical session, 4 to 6 hours. A realistic problem close to what the role actually involves, scheduled around you and sized to respect your time.
4. Practical review, 60 minutes. We walk through what you built, why, and what you would change with more time.
5. Partner conversation, 45 minutes. Scope, expectations, terms, and your questions.
6. Decision, normally within two working days of the last conversation.

How to apply

Send an application through the form. A partner reads every one, and you will hear back either way. If you are unsure whether you qualify, apply anyway and say what you are unsure about.

We will tell you what we can and cannot offer before you commit to anything.

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