QA Lead Engineer

QA Lead Engineer GOcxm | Hybrid | Engineering THE ROLE GOcxm is looking for an experienced QA Lead Engineer to own quality across our technology organization. This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll shape how we build, test, and ship software while directly managing a team of QA engineers. You'll be embedded in our SDLC, working closely with product, engineering, and DevOps to raise the bar on quality at every stage of development. If you thrive at the intersection of people leadership, process improvement, and deep technical craft, this role is built for you. ABOUT GoCXM GoCXM is a fast-growing technology company that helps consumer-facing brands deepen relationships with their customers and drive sales performance through a proprietary platform of integrated engagement, analytics, and field execution tools. The company positions itself as a unified growth platform for modern CPG brands. We work with leading brands to turn marketing campaign and execution data into actionable insights that improve decision-making, strengthen accountability, and demonstrate measurable business impact. WHAT YOU'LL DO SDLC Process & Quality Strategy • Own and continuously improve QA practices across the full software development lifecycle from requirements review through post-release monitoring. • Identify gaps in existing processes and drive adoption of testing standards, quality gates, and best practices organization-wide. • Partner with engineering leads and product managers to embed quality early in the development process. • Define and maintain QA documentation standards, including test strategies, test plans, test cases, and bug reporting guidelines. • Track and report on quality metrics (defect rates, test coverage, escape rate, regression pass rates) to leadership, using data to prioritize improvement initiatives. People Management & Team Development • Directly manage a team of QA engineers. Set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, conduct performance reviews, and support career growth. • Hire, onboard, and mentor QA talent, cultivating a team culture of ownership, curiosity, and continuous improvement. • Assign work across the team, balance workloads, and ensure QA capacity aligns with sprint and release commitments. • Act as an escalation point for complex technical or process challenges encountered by your team. Manual Testing - APIs & Web Applications • Lead and perform manual testing of REST API microservices using tools like Postman including functional, regression, integration, contract, and edge case testing. • Test web applications across multiple browsers and environments, validating UI behavior, cross-browser compatibility, and user flows. • Design and execute exploratory testing sessions to surface issues that scripted tests may miss. • Collaborate with developers to triage, reproduce, and verify bug fixes, ensuring clear and actionable defect documentation. Test Planning & Execution • Develop comprehensive test plans and test case suites for new features, APIs, and system integrations. • Ensure the QA team executes test plans consistently and completely, reviewing results and enforcing completion criteria before releases. • Establish and maintain regression test suites that evolve with the product. • Define acceptance criteria in partnership with product managers and engineers, and validate that features meet those criteria before sign-off. Test Automation & CI/CD Integration • Design, implement, and maintain automated test suites using tools such as Playwright, pytest, and others. • Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, primarily GitHub Actions, so quality checks run automatically on every pull request and pre-merge. • Establish test reporting, alerting, and failure triage processes within the pipeline so teams have fast, actionable feedback. • Champion test reliability: monitor flakiness, investigate root causes, and enforce standards that keep the suite trustworthy. • Evaluate and introduce additional testing tools and frameworks as the product and team scale. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Experience • 7+ years of software quality engineering experience, including at least 2 years in a lead or senior role with direct reports or significant mentorship responsibility. • Proven track record improving QA processes and testing culture within an engineering organization. Technical Skills • Strong hands-on experience with API testing: Postman or equivalent tools, RESTful services. • Proficiency writing automated tests with Playwright and/or pytest; able to write, review, and refactor test code to a high standard. • Solid understanding of CI/CD concepts; experience configuring test stages in GitHub Actions or comparable pipelines. • Comfortable working in Git-based workflows: branching, pull requests, code review. • Web testing experience across modern browsers; familiarity with browser DevTools for debugging. • Working knowledge of microservices architectures and how distributed systems affect test strategy. Process & Leadership • Demonstrated ability to build and execute test strategies from scratch, not just inherit them. • Experience writing and maintaining test plans, test cases, and QA documentation. • Strong communication skills: able to represent quality concerns clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders. • Data-driven mindset: comfortable defining and tracking quality KPIs to inform decisions. Nice to Have • Experience with performance or load testing tools (e.g., k6, Locust, …). • Familiarity with contract testing frameworks (e.g., Pact). • Knowledge of security testing basics (OWASP top 10, API authentication testing). • Experience with observability tools (e.g., Sentry, Grafana) used alongside testing for production quality monitoring. • Background in Agile/Scrum environments; experience as a QA voice in sprint ceremonies.