[Remote] Lead, Software Quality Assurance- Contract-to-Hire

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Lirio is a technology/software company that specializes in behavioral science, data science, and machine learning to enhance consumer engagement and health interventions. The Software QA Lead Engineer will be responsible for quality strategy and execution across the company's cloud-native platform, leading quality assurance efforts and mentoring QA engineers. Responsibilities • Lead the design, implementation, and execution of comprehensive test strategy across APIs, services, event-driven workflows (Kafka), and UI surfaces • Own and evolve automated test coverage (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end) and maintain a risk-based manual test strategy where automation is not practical • Ensure test coverage for functional, regression, integration, performance, and reliability testing (timeouts, retries, idempotency, failure modes) • Advocate for quality engineering practices (TDD where appropriate, CI quality gates, code review standards, and testability in design) • Define and maintain quality gates in CI/CD (e.g., minimum coverage thresholds, contract test pass, critical path E2E pass, vulnerability scan pass where applicable) • Partner with Cloud/SRE to validate release readiness via observability (logging, metrics, tracing) and operational dashboards • Embed quality and testability considerations into feature and system design by reviewing application logic, APIs, data models, event contracts, and UI workflows in partnership with engineers • Establish and enforce standards for automation quality, including flakiness reduction, stabilization practices, clear ownership, and expectations for timely remediation of broken or unreliable tests • Define and document QA processes and best practices • Collaborate with product owners and developers to clarify requirements and acceptance criteria • Participate in backlog refinement and sprint planning to ensure testability of features • Facilitate agile ceremonies as needed • Build and maintain shared QA practices, documentation, and knowledge-sharing mechanisms (playbooks, training, cross-coverage) to avoid single points of failure across squads and releases • Standardize testing approaches for event-driven systems, including message schema validation, backward compatibility, replay scenarios, idempotency, ordering assumptions, and failure handling (Kafka and similar messaging technologies) • Stay current with industry trends, tools, and technologies in software testing • Promote continuous improvement and innovation within the QA team • Evaluate and adopt tooling that improves cycle time (local test environments, ephemeral environments, test data management) • Support production releases, participate in incident triage, and drive root cause analysis with Engineering, SRE/Cloud, and Customer Operations • Track defect escape trends and drive corrective actions (test additions, gating changes, process improvements) • Triage and resolve defects, collaborating with development and support teams Skills • 5-7 years of related experience • Bachelor's degree in related field • Experienced with test automation for APIs/services (e.g., JUnit/TestNG for JVM services, PyTest for Python services) • UI automation experience (e.g., Cypress or Playwright, Jasmine) where applicable • Performance testing (e.g., Gatling, k6, JMeter) and contract testing (e.g., Pact or equivalent) experience • Observability tooling familiarity (Datadog/OpenTelemetry concepts) • Familiarity with CI/CD tools and processes • Experience with version control (e.g., Git) • Cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure) • Scripting and programming languages (e.g., Java, TypeScript, Groovy, Python) • Agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum, XP, SAFe) • Experience with Databases/SQL, Kafka, and Kubernetes • Leadership and coaching skills • Ability to operate in ambiguity and improve systems iteratively (not waiting for perfect process) • Strong judgment around risk-based testing and release decisions • Strong organizational and time management skills • Excellent communication and collaboration abilities • Adaptability and problem-solving skills • Ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders Benefits • Medical (HSA available) • Dental • Vision • Short-term & long-term disability (company-paid) • Life & AD&D (company-paid) • 401K with company match • 10 paid holidays, quarterly company closure dates, + holiday week company closure • Flexible time off policy • Work from home • 6 weeks paid parental leave Company Overview • Lirio is a behavior change AI platform that delivers behavioral engagement solutions for organizations. It was founded in 2016, and is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, with a workforce of 51-200 employees. Its website is Apply tot his job