QA Engineering Manager

Location: Kyiv, Ukraine

Type: full-time

We're looking for a hands-on QA Engineering Manager to lead a QA team responsible for the quality, reliability, and security of enterprise software built around Bitcoin and digital asset infrastructure. This role combines technical execution with team leadership. You'll build and maintain automated testing frameworks, establish scalable QA processes, and work closely with Engineering, Product, and DevOps to ensure reliable releases. You'll be expected to write automation code and work directly with CI/CD pipelines while developing the team and improving quality standards.

Responsibilities:

• Team Leadership and Development: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of QA engineers. Establish effective onboarding, development, and hiring practices as the team scales.
• Test Automation: Design, implement, and maintain automated test frameworks using Python, Playwright, pytest, and REST API testing tools. Remain hands-on with scripting and framework development.
• Test Strategy and Coverage: Define and execute testing strategies across functional, regression, API, performance, and security testing. Establish measurable quality metrics and improve regression coverage.
• Security and Reliability: Develop testing approaches for complex authorization flows, transaction processing, state transitions, and failure scenarios. Identify vulnerabilities and validate system behavior across application and API boundaries.
• CI/CD Integration: Integrate automated test suites into GitLab CI/CD or GitHub Actions, establishing quality gates for pull requests, scheduled builds, and releases.
• Engineering Collaboration: Partner with Engineering, Product, and DevOps to identify testability concerns early, improve defect resolution, and ensure release readiness.
• Quality Governance: Establish consistent QA standards, defect management workflows, regression practices, and reporting processes. Communicate quality metrics, production incidents, and release risks clearly to stakeholders.
• Continuous Improvement: Evaluate new testing tools and methodologies, use AI-assisted tools where appropriate, and proactively develop expertise in emerging technologies and domain-specific testing challenges.

Qualifications:

• QA Experience: 5+ years of software QA experience, with at least 2 years in a leadership or management role; preferably in fintech, blockchain, banking, capital markets, enterprise SaaS, or security-focused industries.
• Hands-On Automation: Strong practical experience writing automated tests using Python, Playwright, and pytest, with experience in REST API testing using tools such as Postman or equivalent frameworks.
• CI/CD: Practical experience integrating automated tests into GitLab CI/CD or GitHub Actions pipelines.
• Team Building: Experience recruiting, onboarding, mentoring, and developing QA engineers, ideally growing a team from a small initial group into a larger function.
• Security-First Testing: Strong understanding of software security testing, authorization, complex state transitions, and failure handling. Experience with penetration testing or vulnerability assessments is valuable.
• Testing Fundamentals: Experience with functional, regression, API, and performance testing, including the use of appropriate testing tools and measurable quality metrics.
• Technical Collaboration: Ability to work closely with developers and DevOps engineers, investigate complex defects, and contribute directly to automation code and pipeline configuration.
• Communication: Strong leadership, documentation, and stakeholder management skills, including communicating risks and release readiness across distributed teams.
• Learning Agility: Demonstrated ability to learn unfamiliar technologies quickly and independently. Experience using AI-assisted development or research tools to accelerate technical learning is a plus.