Senior QA Lead Automation Engineer

Nova Solutions powers two primary product ecosystems:

1. Nova Home Care (NHC): A secure, HIPAA-compliant clinical healthcare and home care management platform. The stack includes a Django REST Framework backend (novahomecareapi), a React 18 / Vite single-page application (novahomecareportal), an auto-generated client SDK (@medicalwebexperts/core), and multi-tenant marketing properties (foursites, gatsby). Hosted on AWS (us-east-2) with strict data privacy controls.
2. Nova Virtual Solutions (NVS): A high-performance remote workforce management system and marketing platform. The stack includes an internal HRIS/ePortal powered by Laravel 8+ (hris), asynchronous job queues on Redis/Horizon, a Next.js 16 public-facing web app (nextjs-homesite), and custom Caddy reverse proxies on AWS (ap-southeast-1 & ap-northeast-1).

We are looking for a Senior QA Automation Engineer / QA Lead to lead our Quality Engineering initiatives. In this role, you will transition our QA practices from manual verification to a high-leverage, unified automation framework embedded directly into our continuous delivery pipelines.

You will establish automated regression suites for mission-critical user journeys (employee onboarding, document generation and electronic signatures, clinical visit verifications, and timesheet workflows), ensure backend API contract safety, prevent database performance regressions (N+1 queries), and maintain strict HIPAA compliance across all environments.

1. End-to-End (E2E) & UI Test Automation

• Design, build, and maintain headless, automated E2E test suites using Cypress and Playwright for complex clinical and administrative workflows.
• Automate critical multi-step frontend journeys: employee onboarding applications, PDF document generation (jsPDF), electronic signature pads, document uploads (TBT, SSN, ID forms), and Electronic Visit Verification (EVV).
• Maintain fast, isolated component and unit test suites in Vitest and React Testing Library.

2. Backend API & Contract Testing

• Write comprehensive integration and unit tests using pytest / pytest-django for Django REST Framework (DRF) and PHPUnit for Laravel endpoints.
• Establish OpenAPI Schema Contract Testing (drf-spectacular / Swagger) to validate serializer changes in CI and prevent breaking changes or schema drift in frontend SDKs (@medicalwebexperts/core).
• Test API boundary inputs, authentication flows, role-based access control (RBAC), and mass assignment protections (Eloquent $fillable/$guarded).

3. CI/CD Integration & Quality Gates

• Integrate automated test suites directly into GitLab CI/CD pipelines to gate merge requests targeting staging and main branches.
• Configure ephemeral service containers (PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, Redis) in CI runners to execute reproducible test runs.
• Enforce strict code formatting and linting gates (zero-warning policy with ESLint and Prettier) across all frontend repositories.

4. Performance & Database Query Auditing

• Audit API endpoints and asynchronous workers to eliminate N+1 query regressions by verifying proper ORM prefetching (select_related, prefetch_related in Django; with() in Laravel).
• Audit and monitor background worker queues (Celery and Laravel Horizon) for batch processing reliability and failed job recovery.

5. HIPAA Compliance, Security & Data Safety

• Ensure strict adherence to HIPAA standards across all test environments: zero plaintext Protected Health Information (PHI) or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in logs, assertions, error traces, or test outputs.
• Implement robust, anonymized mock fixtures using factory-boy and Faker libraries.
• Verify error-handling boundaries to ensure 500 responses never leak internal stack traces or environment variables to client applications.

6. Production Telemetry & Continuous Feedback

• Monitor real-time telemetry on Sentry and Uptime Kuma to proactively catch regressions.
• Implement a test-driven feedback loop: convert newly detected production issues into reproducible automated test cases immediately.

7. Manual Smoke Testing & Regression Runbooks

• Own and evolve the Portal Manual QA Masterlist and regression test matrices.
• Conduct structured manual smoke testing for complex deployments, AWS SSM cutovers, and third-party integrations (e.g., Google reCAPTCHA v3, Turnstile, Calendly).

First 30 Days — Automated Regression Pipeline

Goal: Establish a reliable foundation for automated regression testing.

Key Deliverables:

• Integrate headless Cypress E2E tests into the GitLab CI/CD pipeline.
• Audit the existing manual QA test suite and identify critical workflows for automation.
• Establish baseline automated test coverage for the Nova Home Care portal.
• Identify high-risk and high-value user journeys that should be prioritized for automation.

First 60 Days — API Contract Testing & SDK Safety

Goal: Strengthen backend quality and prevent breaking API changes.

Key Deliverables:

• Implement automated OpenAPI schema validation using Django REST Framework and drf-spectacular.
• Introduce schema drift detection to prevent breaking changes from reaching frontend applications.
• Integrate API contract checks into GitLab CI/CD merge request pipelines.
• Expand automated backend test coverage using pytest and PHPUnit.
• Establish automated testing standards for API authentication, authorization, validation, and error handling.

First 90 Days — Visual Regression & Continuous Quality Monitoring

Goal: Build a proactive quality feedback loop across the product ecosystem.

Key Deliverables:

• Introduce visual regression testing using Playwright and/or Percy.
• Expand automated regression coverage across critical marketing and application workflows.
• Establish a process for converting production issues identified through Sentry into automated regression tests.
• Improve QA monitoring and reporting across CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish a continuous feedback loop between production incidents, automated testing, and future releases.

• 4+ years of experience in Quality Assurance / Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) with strong automation expertise.
• E2E & Frontend Testing: Deep hands-on experience with Cypress, Playwright, and Vitest / Jest in modern React / Next.js / TypeScript environments.
• Backend Testing: Proficient in pytest (Python/Django) and/or PHPUnit (PHP/Laravel).
• API Testing & Contracts: Strong experience testing RESTful APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, and schema validation.
• CI/CD & Containers: Strong proficiency with GitLab CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and docker compose environments.
• Databases: Solid understanding of relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB), SQL queries, and ORM query optimization (identifying N+1 issues).

• Experience working with HIPAA-compliant healthcare systems or fintech/HRIS platforms.
• Experience with visual regression testing tools (Percy, Playwright Visual Comparisons).
• Familiarity with AWS infrastructure basics (ALB, SSM Parameter Store, ECR) and Cloudflare DNS routing.
• Familiarity with queue architectures (Celery, Laravel Horizon, Redis).
• Experience with monitoring and telemetry platforms (Sentry, Uptime Kuma).

Please submit your resume along with:

1. Links to any open-source test suites, GitHub/GitLab repositories, or technical writing demonstrating your testing philosophy.
2. A brief summary of an end-to-end automation or CI/CD testing framework you designed and integrated from the ground up.