About this role
SmartLight Analytics is looking for an automation-first QA Engineer to build and own test automation across our internal tools, carrier-facing APIs, and carrier and customer portals. This is a hands-on engineering role, not a manual-testing position with automation on the side: you'll design, build, and maintain an automated test framework (e.g., Playwright) as the primary way we catch regressions and gate releases, and you'll bring AI-enabled tooling into how tests get written and maintained.
This is a remote role.
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and maintain automated regression suites (Playwright or an equivalent modern framework) covering internal tools, carrier-facing APIs, and carrier and customer portals
- Integrate automated tests into CI/CD so they run on every relevant change without manual triggering
- Evaluate and apply AI-enabled testing tools - AI-assisted test generation, self-healing selectors, AI-assisted defect triage - to speed up authoring and maintenance while keeping a clear standard for what still needs human review
- Act as the release quality gate for the toolsets you own: sign off on releases based on automated test results, or make an explicit, documented risk call when something isn't ready
- Find, isolate, and clearly document defects with reproducible steps, expected vs. actual behavior, and severity
- Prioritize test coverage by risk - carrier- and customer-facing paths, compliance-relevant flows, and high-usage features get coverage first
- Partner closely with Software Engineering and Product throughout the development cycle so testing isn't a bottleneck bolted on at the end
- Build and document repeatable QA practice - test architecture, coverage standards, release-gate criteria - so quality doesn't depend on any one person's memory
- Produce testing and change-management artifacts that hold up as evidence under compliance frameworks like SOC 2
What We're Looking For
- Hands-on experience building and maintaining automated test suites with Playwright or a directly comparable modern automation framework (Cypress, Selenium/WebDriver, etc.)
- Experience testing both UI and API layers, including reasoning about API contracts and data flows for integration testing
- Experience integrating automated tests into a CI/CD pipeline
- Practical experience using AI tooling to accelerate software testing work - test generation, test maintenance, or defect triage - with good judgment about where AI output needs verification
- Strong defect isolation and reproduction skills; writes bug reports engineers can act on without back-and-forth
- Sound risk judgment - can distinguish a cosmetic issue from one that threatens data integrity, compliance posture, or customer/carrier trust
- Comfortable being a release gatekeeper: can say "this isn't ready" and back it up with evidence
- Self-directed and comfortable building and improving automation process independently
Nice to Have
- Experience testing systems in a regulated or compliance-sensitive environment (SOC 2, HIPAA-adjacent, or similar)
- Experience testing external-facing API integrations with third-party partners
- Familiarity with Python and/or Snowflake-adjacent data pipelines, enough to sanity-check data quality issues surfaced during testing
- Experience standing up or significantly leveling up an automation framework
Reporting & Team
This role sits within Software Engineering, working closely with engineering, Product, and Data Platforms, with room to grow into a broader quality engineering function as SmartLight's toolset and carrier/customer-facing surfaces expand.