Senior QA Automation Engineer

Senior QA Automation Engineer We run last-mile delivery operations. Our platform covers the full driver lifecycle and the systems that keep fleets moving: hiring and HR, shift planning, order dispatch, supplier operations, payroll and Telegram bots used daily by drivers and ops. This is a mature, multi-repository product — Flask, FastAPI, React, PHP/Laravel, Python cron jobs, and Telegram bots — sharing a MySQL core. Documentation is uneven. Behaviour is often implied by production, not written down. Quality has been carried by developers and exploratory testing. There is no mature end-to-end automation layer yet. About the role You will own quality across this fleet. You will design and build the automated testing framework from a thin baseline, document how the system should behave for clients, drivers, HR, and internal ops, and turn that into reliable automated coverage. This is hands-on and autonomous. You will sit with engineering and stakeholders before features are built, write scenarios people can actually read, automate UI and API flows, check database state, and reproduce multi-step defects that span several services. Success looks like faster, safer releases — not a growing pile of flaky tests. Responsibilities • Take end-to-end ownership of QA: design, build, and maintain the automation framework. • Learn how the multi-repo system works, and how it should work for drivers, HR, dispatch, finance, and internal ops. • Ask the right questions and document expected behaviour where inherited docs are incomplete or outdated. • Author English-readable scenarios in Cucumber / Gherkin. • Build automation in TypeScript and Python (Playwright for UI; pytest / API tests for services). • Drive the UI through a page object model (Playwright preferred). • Validate API contracts (REST) across Flask, FastAPI, Laravel, and third-party integrations. • Validate database state with SQL against MySQL. • Feed into requirements as new features are planned — not only after they ship. • Flag compliance, data-protection, payroll, and security implications (employee PII, DATEV, GDPR). • Run exploratory testing; reproduce multi-step defects precisely; identify edge cases. • Keep tests maintainable as features land; kill or fix flaky coverage rather than ignoring it. • Wire automation into CI (Bitbucket Pipelines) so it actually gates releases. • Build a repeatable, documented QA process from an unreliable baseline. Requirements • 5+ years in QA / test automation, hands-on with TypeScript or JavaScript and Python. • 3+ years web UI automation using a page object model — Playwright strongly preferred (Cypress or Selenium acceptable if you can move to Playwright). • 2+ years BDD with Cucumber and Gherkin. • 2+ years end-to-end QA ownership: define, document, build, and maintain tests with limited direction. • 3+ years requirements analysis and stakeholder communication. • 2+ years SQL against MySQL (or PostgreSQL) to assert database state — not just “can write a SELECT”. • 3+ years exploratory testing and precise multi-step defect reproduction. • Solid REST API testing (status, payloads, auth, idempotency, error contracts). • Strong knowledge of QA methodologies, test design, and when not to automate. • Experience in Agile / Scrum. • Excellent written and spoken English; you will write the scenarios the team lives with. • Ability to own the framework and the process without a large QA org behind you. • Strong detail orientation: you spot gaps in specs and the edge cases others skip. Nice to have • Reading and working with React and FastAPI / Flask code (you will not be asked to ship product features, but you will read the code). • PHP / Laravel familiarity (legacy dispatch and JET webhook services). • CI/CD (Bitbucket Pipelines or similar), Docker, basic observability (logs / Grafana). • HR, payroll, fleet, last-mile delivery, or other operational domain experience. • Experience in a regulated or audited environment (GDPR, payroll, DATEV, or similar). • Telegram bot / webhook / event-driven flow testing. • Comfort using AI in the engineering workflow. • German (helpful for HR/DATEV domain language; not required). What this role is not • Not a junior “write Selenium scripts from a test case spreadsheet” seat. • Not a Java / TestNG / Selenium-only role. Our stack is Python, TypeScript, React, FastAPI/Flask, MySQL. • Not AWS/Kubernetes-heavy. Infra is largely self-hosted Docker and existing CI. • Not a manager of a QA team (yet). You are the senior individual contributor who builds the function.