Senior QA Automation Engineer (Playwright / Web Testing)

Job Title: Senior QA Automation Engineer (Playwright / Web Testing)

Location: Remote (EST TimeZone)

Job Type: Contract 12 months

We are seeking a Senior QA Automation Engineer with strong experience in web application testing and Playwright automation to support our client's modern software delivery environment.

The successful candidate will be responsible for designing, developing, maintaining, and scaling automated test suites for modern web applications. You will work closely with developers, product owners, business analysts, and DevOps teams to improve application quality, increase automated test coverage, reduce regression testing effort, and enable reliable, frequent deployments.

This role is ideal for someone who combines strong hands-on Playwright expertise with solid software testing fundamentals and a deep understanding of modern web applications.

Key Responsibilities

Web Application Testing

• Design and execute comprehensive functional, integration, system, regression, smoke, sanity, and end-to-end testing for modern web applications.
• Analyze application requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and technical specifications to develop comprehensive test scenarios and test cases.
• Validate web application functionality across different workflows, user roles, browsers, devices, and environments.
• Test complex web applications including dynamic components, asynchronous operations, forms, tables, modals, file uploads/downloads, authentication flows, and multi-step business processes.
• Identify, document, reproduce, and triage defects with clear steps to reproduce, expected/actual results, logs, screenshots, and supporting evidence.
• Work closely with developers to investigate defects, identify root causes, and verify fixes.
• Participate in test planning, estimation, defect triage, release validation, and quality discussions throughout the SDLC.
• Identify opportunities to improve test coverage, testability, automation, and overall QA processes.

Playwright Automation

• Design, build, and maintain scalable end-to-end automated test suites using Playwright and Playwright Test.
• Develop reusable automation frameworks, fixtures, utilities, helpers, and test components.
• Apply maintainable automation architecture and design patterns such as the Page Object Model (POM).
• Build reliable and resilient locators using user-facing attributes, accessibility roles, labels, and other robust locator strategies.
• Use Playwright's auto-waiting and web-first assertions to minimize synchronization issues and test flakiness.
• Automate complex user journeys involving authentication, authorization, navigation, forms, data validation, and multi-page workflows.
• Implement efficient authentication strategies using storageState and reusable browser contexts.
• Develop data-driven and parameterized automated tests where appropriate.
• Create reusable test fixtures and configuration for multiple environments and test scenarios.
• Maintain and continuously improve existing Playwright test suites as the application evolves.

Cross-Browser & Web Compatibility Testing

• Execute automated and manual testing across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
• Validate responsive web applications across different screen sizes and viewport configurations.
• Identify browser-specific functionality and compatibility issues.
• Investigate rendering, JavaScript, network, timing, and browser-specific failures.
• Support cross-browser regression testing as part of release validation.

API & Network Testing

• Perform REST API testing and validate responses, status codes, headers, authentication, schemas, and business rules.
• Integrate API-level validation into end-to-end automated workflows.
• Use Playwright to intercept, monitor, mock, and manipulate network requests where appropriate.
• Validate frontend/backend integration and identify issues across application layers.
• Understand HTTP/HTTPS, REST, JSON, cookies, sessions, authentication, and browser networking fundamentals.

Test Reliability & Debugging

• Identify and eliminate flaky automated tests and unreliable test dependencies.
• Debug complex failures using Playwright Trace Viewer, screenshots, videos, console logs, network activity, and test artifacts.
• Analyze failed test runs and distinguish between application defects, automation defects, environmental issues, and test-data problems.
• Continuously improve test execution reliability and maintainability.

CI/CD & DevOps Integration

• Integrate automated Playwright tests into CI/CD pipelines.
• Configure parallel test execution, retries, test tagging, and sharding to optimize execution time.
• Support automated quality gates and regression testing within deployment pipelines.
• Publish test results and artifacts for development and QA teams.
• Work with DevOps teams to troubleshoot test execution across development, QA, staging, and production-like environments.

Collaboration & Quality Engineering

• Work closely with developers, product owners, business analysts, and DevOps teams.
• Translate business and technical requirements into comprehensive test scenarios and automated tests.
• Participate in Agile ceremonies including sprint planning, refinement, stand-ups, demos, and retrospectives.
• Promote automation-first testing and shift-left quality practices.
• Contribute to improving overall QA strategy, test coverage, automation standards, and engineering practices.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience in software QA and test automation, with significant experience testing web applications.
• Strong hands-on experience with Playwright and Playwright Test (@playwright/test).
• Advanced experience with TypeScript or JavaScript.
• Strong understanding of web application architecture and modern browser-based applications.
• Experience designing and maintaining enterprise-scale automated test suites.
• Strong knowledge of functional, regression, integration, system, smoke, and end-to-end testing.
• Experience with Page Object Model (POM) and other automation design patterns.
• Strong understanding of resilient locator strategies, including accessibility-based and user-centric locators.
• Experience testing dynamic web applications, asynchronous operations, AJAX/API interactions, and complex UI components.
• Experience with REST API testing and JSON-based services.
• Experience with API mocking, network interception, stubbing, or request manipulation.
• Strong understanding of HTTP/HTTPS, cookies, sessions, authentication, authorization, and browser networking.
• Hands-on experience with Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit testing.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with Git-based source control and collaborative development workflows.
• Strong debugging, analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Experience working in an Agile/Scrum software development environment.