QA Principal

About the role

As a QA Principal at Coinspaid, you will be responsible for shaping the company's Quality Engineering strategy and ensuring high standards across various engineering domains. You will assess the current QA maturity, identify areas for improvement, and drive initiatives that align with the company's goals and risks.

You will collaborate with teams across Product, Engineering, and DevOps to embed quality controls throughout the software development lifecycle. Success in this role involves not only enhancing existing processes but also leveraging AI and emerging technologies to innovate QA practices and establish clear quality metrics.

Skills that matter here

• Python: This role prefers strong hands-on programming experience in Python for designing scalable automation.
• Go: Experience with Go is welcomed, especially for contributing to backend automation.
• Node.js: Node.js experience is relevant for candidates looking to work on backend automation.
• CI/CD: You will utilize CI/CD practices to enhance the quality engineering processes.
• Docker: Docker will be part of the cloud-native environments you work with.
• Kubernetes: Experience with Kubernetes is important for managing containerized applications in QA.

Who this role suits

• A seasoned QA professional with over 8 years of experience in Quality Assurance or Quality Engineering.
• Someone who enjoys technical leadership and has a proven track record of defining QA strategies and standards.
• A candidate who is research-driven and comfortable evaluating new technologies, particularly AI tools.
• An individual who thrives in a flexible, async-friendly work environment and values continuous improvement.

From the employer

• Take ownership of the company-wide Quality Engineering strategy, operating model, and improvement roadmap; continue evolving them as products, risks, and organizational needs change.
• Assess Quality Engineering maturity across domains, identify systemic bottlenecks and inconsistencies, and prioritize the improvements with the highest company-wide impact.
• Define and evolve cross-domain standards and guardrails for test architecture, coverage, quality evidence, testability, observability, release readiness, and production validation.
• Drive continuous improvement of the end-to-end QA process and embed shift-left practices, quality controls, and risk-based gates across the SDLC together with Product, Engineering, Architecture, and DevOps/SRE.
• Own the strategic direction of the QA toolchain and automation architecture, and validate key technical decisions hands-on through code, prototypes, and architecture reviews across UI and backend automation.
• Continuously benchmark market practices and emerging technologies, including AI; validate ideas through experiments and turn successful findings into company-wide transformation initiatives such as framework modernization, contract and performance testing, smarter test selection, and cloud-native test environments.
• Actively use AI in daily engineering work and advance its adoption across QA.
• Define scalable release-quality principles and provide technical recommendations for systemic, cross-team, or ambiguous quality risks.
• Lead cross-team investigations and root-cause analysis for critical incidents, unstable environments, systemic automation failures, and quality problems without a clear owner.
• Establish meaningful quality metrics and make trends, risks, technical debt, and improvement outcomes visible to engineering leadership.
• Develop QA Technical Leads as domain-level technical owners, strengthening their ability to translate company-wide direction into sustainable practices and decisions within their domains.
• Influence, align stakeholders, and translate business, regulatory, and operational risks into clear engineering priorities.

• 8+ years in Quality Assurance / Quality Engineering, including technical leadership across multiple teams or domains.
• Experience defining QA strategy, standards, or large-scale transformations with measurable results.
• Deep knowledge of Quality practices risk-based testing, coverage strategy, shift-left, quality gates, testability, release readiness, and production quality signals.
• Strong hands-on programming experience and the ability to design and contribute to scalable UI and backend automation. Python is preferred, but strong experience with Go, Node.js, or another relevant stack is welcome.
• Strong experience with distributed backend systems, REST APIs, event-driven workflows, third-party integrations.
• Experience with CI/CD, Docker/Kubernetes, cloud-native or GitOps environments, and observability tools.
• Ability to define useful quality metrics, communicate technical risk, and influence senior stakeholders.
• A research-driven mindset, practical experience evaluating new technologies, and confident, responsible, and active use of AI tools in everyday engineering work.

• Flexible Benefits Benefit Bar – up to €230/month.
• Fully remote work from almost anywhere.
• Optional offices and relocation support.
• Flexible, async-friendly environment.
• Budget for courses, certifications, and professional development.
• Language learning support.
• Medical insurance or reimbursement depending on location.
• Access to mental health support.
• Financial support for important life events.
• Merch shop with rewards system.
• Team offsites and company events.