Senior QA Automation Engineer

About Toptal

Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and team members based around the globe, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote workforce.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

Job Summary

Toptal is a quality-first company. While quality is the whole team’s responsibility, our QA Automation Engineers lead this effort. We believe that top quality can only be reached by attending to it through three different angles:

Product knowledge - completely understanding the product and its functionalities.

Engineering domain - increasing the test coverage or solving their gaps, understanding its architecture and design, and finding opportunities for improvement or possible issues.

Process audit - identifying quality issues we can prevent with simple changes in our software development process.

We’re looking for a Senior QA Automation Engineer to join Toptal and work on a new product within our Core Team. You’ll be part of a small, high-velocity team building an AI-powered platform.

We develop the tools we own as a team using Ruby and Rails on Rails, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and Node.js. You will need to love and welcome learning different technologies and be able to switch contexts between the applications and technologies we support very often, based on the defined priorities.

As a Senior QA Automation Engineer, your work will focus on both maintaining and improving the high-level test coverage of our tools, as well as assisting the team in analyzing the complex technical initiatives by finding and correctly handling corner cases and ensuring all of them meet the high-quality standards of Toptal.

This is a remote position. We do not offer visa sponsorship or assistance. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.

Responsibilities

The following information is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or required skills.

You will participate in defining, testing, and validating first-class software web applications and Slack bots serving our internal Core team. These features will be used mostly by the Engineering Leadership and Senior Engineering Leadership teams, but could support the core operations of the entire Engineering function.

Among other responsibilities:

Work to maintain and improve our automated test suites in RSpec, Jest, Playwright, and Cypress, as well as to set up automated test suites for new products or tools from scratch.

Estimate, prioritize, plan, and coordinate testing activities.

Identify, record, document thoroughly, and track bugs.

Review the work of your colleagues from white box (PR reviews) and black box (manual and exploratory) testing perspectives.

Improve your team’s processes, brainstorm ideas, and communicate your status and progress.

Collaborate closely with stakeholders and users throughout the preliminary planning phase, ensuring a holistic understanding of the product to plan and deliver new features effectively.

Contribute to writing Acceptance Criteria and Definition of Done for the team’s features.

Review requirements, specifications, and technical design documents to provide timely and meaningful feedback and identify corner cases we must address appropriately.

Track quality assurance metrics, like defect densities and open defect counts.

Stay up-to-date with new testing tools and test strategies.

Development experience, including design, implementation, documentation, and maintenance of test automation in Ruby on Rails, React, and NodeJS (a plus).

Mentor other people, provide feedback, and grow as a part of the team.

Actively participate in meetings, including Scrum meetings, squad meetings, pair programming sessions, etc.

A holistic understanding of the product and users’ needs, ideally from a Product Management perspective, is a plus. Prior experience in a Product Manager role is beneficial but not required.

In the first week, expect to:

Begin your onboarding and integration into Toptal.

Get familiar with our product portfolio and team structure.

Learn our processes

Get acquainted with our tech stack.

In the first month, expect to:

Implement your first automated tests.

Have strong knowledge of Toptal’s business and our team’s mission and vision.

Start working on regular team tasks and become familiar with the business domain.

Attend regular meetings, like technical calls, retrospectives, and the monthly Engineering All-Hands meeting.

In the first three months, expect to:

Start contributing to the technical topics and understand the application and the general testing system.

Learn and take part in the utilization of the latest testing technologies.

Deliver value in regular cadence.

Get comfortable with our team’s daily work routine.

Review code written by your colleagues and identify possible areas for improvement, while exercising discretion and independent judgment.

Be ready to propose improvements to Toptal’s processes and codebase.

In the first six months, expect to:

Develop automated tests to ensure that our products flawlessly support our business and behave at sky-high quality standards.

Set up the automated test suite for our new products and tools from scratch.

Be actively engaged in developing new features your team works on.

In the first year, expect to:

Become a champion of new ideas that will thrive in achieving the purpose of our company, squad, and team while ensuring the quality culture we value the most.

Become a key team member, be responsible for the QA and overall testing activities, and help others inside and outside the team.

Develop your team’s trust to make strategic decisions regarding tools or methods involved in the QA process.

Significantly increase the automated test coverage of our team’s products, including end-to-end and integration tests; help your teammates with manual and exploratory testing when necessary.

Deeply understand Toptal’s technical stack, collaboration rituals, processes, performance, and future work.

Determine what your career path looks like at Toptal.

Requirements

5+ years of Quality Assurance and test automation.

RSpec, Jest, and Cypress are your daily bread and butter.

Familiarity with Playwright, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript/TypeScript, and GraphQL.

Being a team player - avoiding solo performances and helping others.

Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.

Full autonomy in daily work; unblock yourself by finding the right people or help.

Hands-on experience with both white box and black box testing.

Have a solid QA automation experience, primarily focused on adding end-to-end tests in monolithic and distributed systems.

Have solid hands-on experience with automated testing tools for frontend and backend applications.

Hands-on experience with different tools - Testing tools, Version Control systems (Git), Test Management Software, Bug Tracking Software (Jira), CI tools (Jenkins, Github Actions, etc.), Docker, Kubernetes (a plus), and Google Cloud Platform (a plus).

Critical thinking and enthusiastic skepticism.

Bonus points for hands-on experience testing Slack bots and Jira add-ons.

Experience or familiarity with Product Management, including understanding user needs and helping plan and deliver features, is a plus.

You should be a proactive problem-solver and take ownership of your work, collaborating closely with the team to achieve high-quality results.

You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.