QA Automation Lead (Remote First)

About the role

Clara, a Latin American payment platform, is looking for a QA Automation Lead to own its test automation strategy, frameworks and quality standards. This is a technical leadership role focused on web, API and mobile automation, partnering with Engineering Directors, pod leads and Product to make automation the default path to release confidence, while mentoring QA and engineering teammates. It is remote first, with occasional in-person ramp-up and team moments.

Key responsibilities

• Define and evolve the automation roadmap (test pyramid, risk-based prioritization, shift-left) aligned with product delivery across payments, onboarding, cards and accounts.
• Own shared automation frameworks (e.g. Playwright for web/API, Appium/Wdio for mobile), set coding standards and review patterns.
• Set org-wide release-blocking coverage, flakiness thresholds and what must be automated versus explored manually.
• Align with Engineering Directors, Pod Leads, Product and Platform on capacity, environments and test data, so pods own execution while QA owns the capability.
• Mentor QA engineers and developers, coach on code review and adoption of shared tooling, and run technical hiring signals for automation roles.
• Drive automation into GitHub Actions (smoke on PR, regression on deploy), reporting (e.g. Allure/Qase or internal test manager) and failure triage.

Required profile

• 6+ years in software quality engineering with deep automation experience (not manual-only QA).
• Proven technical leadership: framework decisions, mentoring and raising the quality bar across teams.
• Strong stakeholder communication and strategic mindset; ability to push back constructively on scope that harms reliability.
• Excellent English; Spanish is a plus.

Required skills

• Test automation frameworks for web and API (Playwright strongly preferred; Cypress, Selenium or Webdriver.io also relevant).
• TypeScript and/or JavaScript; Java/Spring or React is a plus.
• Modular, data-driven suites (Page Object pattern, tagging, selective CI execution).
• API testing, SQL and test-data design.
• CI/CD integration (GitHub Actions or equivalent) and flaky-test management.
• Agile/Scrum or Kanban and risk-based test prioritization; mobile automation exposure (Appium, BrowserStack) is valuable.

What we offer

• Competitive salary and stock options (ESOP) from day one.
• An annual learning budget and accelerated development paths.
• Hybrid work: remote day to day, with in-person collaboration encouraged.