QA Automation Engineer Internship (Restaurant OS)

3 Months · Fully Remote · 32 Hours/Week Preferred

About ZOVU

Restaurants have enough to worry about. Their software shouldn't be one of those things.

At ZOVU, we're building the Operating System for the modern restaurant. Our vision is simple: one connected platform bringing together Point of Sale, reservations, loyalty, staff operations, and the customer experience.

And we're doing things differently.

Instead of charging restaurants expensive monthly subscriptions, our business model is built around transactions. When restaurants grow, we grow with them.

We're an early-stage, fully remote startup preparing for our first restaurant launches. There's already a product in development, a team building it, and plenty of ambitious work ahead.

If you enjoy solving real problems and making software more dependable, you'll feel at home here.

The Role

We're looking for an ambitious QA Automation Engineer Intern to help make ZOVU reliable, stable, and ready for real restaurant operations.

This isn't an internship where you'll spend three months clicking through screens and checking boxes.

You'll investigate real software problems, build automated tests, discover unexpected behavior, and work alongside our developers to improve the quality of the entire platform.

Imagine a customer successfully pays, but the POS shows an error. Or a kitchen display misses an order update after losing its connection. Or an inventory adjustment is accidentally processed twice.

Your job is to find these problems before restaurants experience them.

You'll work across frontend applications, backend services, APIs, mobile applications, and connected restaurant workflows.

You'll help us establish reliable testing practices and build the automation needed to support ZOVU as the platform grows.

We're not looking for someone who simply knows testing tools. We're looking for someone who knows how to find problems, understand them, and prevent them from happening again.

What Excites You

• Finding What Others Miss: You enjoy investigating unexpected behavior, uncovering hidden bugs, and understanding why systems fail.
• Building Automation: You like writing code that makes testing faster, more reliable, and repeatable.
• Thinking Beyond the Screen: You understand that an issue in one application can affect an entire workflow.
• Solving Real Problems: You enjoy turning complicated technical failures into clear explanations and actionable solutions.
• Taking Ownership: You're comfortable taking responsibility for testing tasks and investigating problems independently.
• Learning Through Experience: You want to grow your skills by testing real products alongside experienced developers.
• Startup Life: You're excited by an environment where priorities evolve, ideas matter, and your contributions make a difference.

What Excites Us

• Practical Testing Experience: You've already tested software through internships, professional experience, university projects, freelance work, or substantial personal projects.
• Automation Experience: You've written automated tests using tools such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, pytest, or similar frameworks.
• Programming Fundamentals: You're comfortable writing code in JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, Dart, or another relevant programming language.
• API Understanding: You understand REST APIs, HTTP responses, requests, assertions, and how to investigate communication between services.
• Real Bug Investigation: You can explain a bug you personally discovered, how you reproduced it, and how you determined what went wrong.
• System-Level Thinking: You understand why databases, payments, applications, and backend services must remain consistent.
• Development Practices: You're familiar with Git and understand the importance of readable, maintainable test code.
• Project Management & Collaboration: You're familiar with Jira or similar tools for defect tracking, managing tasks, and collaborating with developers.
• Independence: You can make progress on assigned work, communicate blockers, and ask useful questions.
• Communication: You're comfortable working in English with an international, remote team.

Bonus points: Experience with mobile or Flutter testing, Postman, SQL/PostgreSQL, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions, payment integrations, or testing production applications.

We care more about what you've actually tested and automated than a long list of tools on your CV.

You don't need to know everything. But you should have practical experience, a strong technical foundation, and the curiosity to investigate how things really work.

What You'll Work On

As part of our QA and engineering efforts, you'll contribute to:

• End-to-End Workflow Testing: Validate ordering, checkout, refunds, reservations, inventory operations, and kitchen workflows.
• Automated Regression Testing: Build and maintain repeatable tests for important features and user journeys.
• API & Backend Testing: Validate endpoints, database changes, permissions, data consistency, and error handling.
• Mobile & POS Testing: Test mobile and tablet workflows, investigate UI and integration failures, and contribute to mobile automation.
• Payments & Transaction Reliability: Investigate payment status mismatches, duplicate operations, retries, and reconciliation.
• Failure & Recovery Testing: Explore network interruptions, timeouts, reconnects, and unexpected application states.
• Bug Investigation: Write clear, reproducible bug reports with expected and actual behavior, logs, screenshots, and supporting evidence.
• Continuous Improvement: Collaborate with developers to investigate failures, improve testing coverage, and reduce regressions.

You won't necessarily work on every area immediately. We'll prioritize tasks based on your strengths, the team's needs, and the product's development stage.

Internship Details & Growth

This is a hands-on internship where you'll develop your QA automation and software engineering skills through practical work, technical guidance, and collaboration with our engineering team.

• Duration: Three months.
• Location: 100% remote.
• Availability: Approximately 32 hours per week preferred.
• Start Date: As soon as possible. You should be able to start within three months of applying.
• Working Style: Primarily asynchronous collaboration with clear responsibilities and regular communication.
• Future Opportunities: As ZOVU develops, further opportunities may become available depending on performance, mutual fit, team needs, and available budget. A permanent position is not guaranteed.

The Good Stuff!

• Real Product Experience: Help improve a software platform preparing for its first restaurant launches.
• Meaningful Responsibilities: Investigate genuine technical problems rather than completing artificial testing exercises.
• Build from an Early Stage: Contribute to testing practices and automation as the platform develops.
• Direct Access to Developers: Work alongside engineers, discuss technical challenges, and receive feedback.
• Room to Grow: Strengthen your skills in automation, API testing, debugging, and system reliability.
• Flexible Remote Work: Take ownership of your schedule and responsibilities while keeping the team informed.
• Your Work Matters: Help prevent software failures that could directly affect restaurant operations.
• International Experience: Join an international team building a product with global ambitions.

Life at ZOVU

We're a remote team connected by one ambition: making restaurant operations simpler through better technology.

We value people who take initiative, communicate openly, care about their work, and enjoy solving problems together.

We believe good ideas can come from anyone. You don't need years of experience to make a meaningful contribution.

You'll have the opportunity to share ideas, challenge assumptions, and help shape how the product develops.

You don't need to have every answer. But you should be curious enough to find them.

We're building something ambitious, and we'd love to have people on board who are excited to help make it happen.

How to Apply

Ready to help build software that restaurants can depend on?

We'd love to see what you can bring to ZOVU.

Apply through the job posting or send your application to HR@zovuhq.com.

Please include your CV, GitHub or portfolio where available, and brief answers to the following questions.

1. Show us what you've tested and automated.

Describe a testing or automation project you personally worked on. Which tools or programming languages did you use, what did you automate, and what was your specific contribution? Include a repository or project link where available.

2. Tell us about a real bug.

Describe a bug you personally discovered. How did you reproduce it, investigate the cause, and document the problem?

3. Think like a QA engineer.

Imagine a customer successfully completes a payment, but the restaurant POS displays an error. What would you investigate, and how would you test that the system recovers correctly without charging the customer twice?

4. Your availability.

Include your earliest possible start date, hours available per week, and time zone.

If your work is private, you can describe your contribution without sharing confidential information.

We value concrete examples, genuine experience, and your own words over polished applications.

Let's build something restaurants will depend on.