Senior Quality Assurance Engineer

As a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, you will be, first and foremost, a software engineer with a deep passion for quality. This is not a traditional test-script-writing role. You will be embedded within a scrum team, writing and maintaining production-grade test automation, actively pairing and mobbing with developers to build a whole-team quality culture, and raising the engineering bar across the organization. You will design and own our automation frameworks, define testing standards, and coach fellow engineers so that quality becomes a shared responsibility — not a handoff at the end of a sprint.

This is a hybrid position that requires 3 days per week onsite in our West Des Moines office.

What you'll do:

Own the Automation Engineering
Design, build, and maintain test automation frameworks from scratch — covering integration, regression, and end-to-end test suites
Write clean, maintainable test code using tools such as Playwright, Cucumber, and related frameworks in the team’s primary tech stack
Establish and evolve testing standards, patterns, and best practices across the product line
Set up and maintain test environments and test data pipelines to support reliable, repeatable automated test execution
Contribute to CI/CD pipeline improvements to ensure automated tests run efficiently on every build
Enable the Team - Shift Quality Left
Pair and mob with software engineers daily to help write integration and regression tests as part of normal sprint work
Champion a whole-team ownership model where every engineer contributes to test coverage, not just QA
Lead working sessions, code reviews, and hands-on enablement to build test-writing capability across the scrum team
Engage during story refinement to challenge testability, surface design gaps, and define acceptance criteria early
Drive test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD) practices where applicable
Improve Delivery Quality Across the Board
Serve as a quality advocate across the scrum team, holding a high bar for what ‘done’ means on every feature
Collaborate with other QA engineers on testing approaches, tooling decisions, and cross-team consistency
Identify and address systemic quality gaps — not just individual defects
Grow into a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on the product and contribute to internal documentation and release communication
Participate in product demonstrations for internal stakeholders and, over time, external clients as your product knowledge matures

Requirements:

• 4-year degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent hands-on engineering experience
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a meaningful portion spent focused on quality and test automation
• Deep proficiency in at least one programming language: Java, Python, or JavaScript/TypeScript
• You write real code, not just configuration
• Hands-on experience building test automation frameworks from the ground up (not just maintaining existing suites)
• Strong working knowledge of integration testing and regression testing strategies, and the ability to teach them to others
• Experience with browser-based end-to-end/functional automation (Examples include Playwright, Cypress, and Selenium)
• Experience with BDD tooling (Cucumber or similar) and writing Gherkin-style acceptance criteria
• Proven experience working in Agile/Scrum teams, including participation in refinement, sprint planning, and retrospectives
• Ability to read, write, and review code in a collaborative engineering environment — comfortable in pull request reviews
• Experience with SQL and the ability to set up and validate test data in relational databases
• Familiarity with CI/CD concepts and integrating automated tests into build pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or similar)
• Ability to work in the West Des Moines office 3 days per week
• Some travel to client locations may be required based on business need

Preferred Experience and Skills:

Certifications in Quality Assurance, software engineering, or Agile practices (ISTQB, AWS, SAFe, etc.)
Experience in healthcare IT, SaaS platforms, or other regulated software environments
Experience with Linux environments and command-line tooling
Exposure to load and performance testing tools (e.g., k6, JMeter, Gatling)
U.S. Citizenship (may be required for positions supporting specific contracts)

Additional Notes:

Who you are:
You think of yourself as a software engineer who specializes in quality — not a tester who learned to code
You get energized by helping other engineers level up, not by being the only one who knows how to test
You are opinionated about code quality, maintainability, and doing things the right way
You thrive in collaborative, team-first environments and are comfortable pairing, mobbing, or leading a working session
You are pragmatic: you know when to automate, when to explore manually, and when to challenge the requirement itself