QA Automation Manager

About the Company

A fast-growing global B2B SaaS provider headquartered in the Netherlands, supported by a remote-first engineering team located across Johannesburg and Cape Town. The organisation is currently architecting a next-generation version of its platform while continuing to scale a rapidly expanding international customer base.

The platform empowers legal teams and corporate services departments to convert complex matter information into clear, actionable insights helping clients make better decisions, reduce operational risk, and streamline workflows across their organisations.

The culture is dynamic, modern, and values-driven, rooted in kindness, openness, autonomy, and a strong sense of shared ownership. The leadership team embraces a flat structure, encourages independent thinking, and operates with a startup mindset where innovation, collaboration, and high performance are part of daily life. Employees enjoy full flexibility, a supportive environment, and the opportunity to shape a globally scalable SaaS product from the ground up.

Job Overview

Establishing a brand-new Quality Assurance function, and the QA Automation Manager will be responsible for designing, building, and leading this capability. You will head up a newly centralised QA team consisting of 5 QA engineers (2 automation and 3 manual testers) and will architect the full QA roadmap for the new V2 platform.

This is a strategic leadership role with 20–30% hands-on involvement. You will drive the transition from manual-heavy testing to automation-led quality engineering, strengthen test governance, uplift the engineering organisation’s quality standards, and ensure predictable, stable, high-quality releases.

Reporting is currently to the CTO, with a planned shift to the DevOps Manager next year. You will operate with full autonomy while being supported by a highly collaborative engineering leadership team.

Duties and Responsibilities

Quality Engineering Leadership

• Design and implement full QA strategy and operating model.
• Establish QA governance, processes, standards, and quality gates.
• Build, lead, and mature the centralised QA team.

Automation Strategy & Execution

• Expand and optimise the existing Playwright automation framework.
• Increase automation coverage across APIs, microservices, regression suites, and critical workflows.
• Ensure CI/CD integration of automated tests for continuous quality feedback.
• Contribute hands-on (20–30%) to complex test development and framework evolution.

Team Management & Capability Development

• Lead and mentor a team of automation and manual testers.
• Drive continuous learning, training, and QA skill uplift across the engineering organisation.
• Guide cross-functional teams on modern testing approaches and “shift-left” practices.

Test Management & Release Readiness

• Oversee test planning, execution, traceability, and defect management.
• Own the Test Case Management System as the single source of truth.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and DevOps to ensure stable, predictable releases.
• Monitor and communicate quality metrics, risks, and release readiness to stakeholders.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with developers, product managers, security, and DevOps.
• Influence engineering practices and promote quality as a shared organisational responsibility.
• Act as the senior voice of quality within the business.

Minimum Requirements

Education & Experience

• 7–10 years of experience in Software Quality Assurance
• 3–5 years of experience in QA management or leadership
• Strong background in SaaS or cloud-based product environments
• Proven experience designing and scaling QA teams and automation ecosystems
• Hands-on programming experience in C# and TypeScript
• Solid experience with API testing, regression automation, and microservices testing
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., CodeFresh) and Git-based workflows
• Familiarity with performance testing tools (JMeter, k6)

Technical Skills

• Automation: Playwright
• API Testing: Postman
• Version Control: Bitbucket/Git
• Performance Testing: JMeter
• Project Management: Jira

Soft Skills

• Excellent leadership, communication, and coaching ability
• Strong decision-making and analytical thinking
• Comfortable operating autonomously in a fast-paced, startup environment
• Skilled in stakeholder engagement and influencing technical direction

Advantageous

• ISTQB Advanced Certification (Security, Performance, or Test Management)
• Experience with QA team formation in a scale-up environment
• Exposure to chaos engineering, reliability testing, or cloud-native observability
• Experience working with distributed global teams
• Understanding of microservices architecture testing at scale
• Previous involvement in V2 rebuilds or platform modernisation projects

Personal Attributes

The ideal person is: 

• Autonomous and capable of leading without micromanagement
• Strategic, with the ability to define long-term QA direction
• Hands-on when needed, able to guide technical decisions
• Calm and solutions-oriented, even in dynamic startup conditions
• Influential, able to uplift an entire engineering organisation’s quality culture
• Structured and disciplined, with a strong sense of governance and standards
• Positive, values-driven, and team-focused, aligned with our culture
• Motivated by excellence and passionate about delivering high-quality products

How to Apply?

If you’re ready to lead a high-calibre engineering team and build a globally scalable SaaS platform, we’d love to hear from you.

Please send your CV to natasha@skillzpage.com or connect with us to explore how this opportunity aligns with your career goals.

If you do not receive a response within 14 days, kindly consider your application unsuccessful.