QA Automation Engineer

Peraton•,

3d•$86,000 - $138,000

About The Position

Peraton Labs is searching for a test-automation specialist to establish and maintain automated testing across two parallel layers — front-end (E2E) and server-side (API) — on a federal AI analytics platform. This is a mid-level role requiring prior experience shipping automated test suites in a product environment. The product context is a TypeScript/React front end backed by Python microservices handling document processing, OCR, summarization, and AI inference pipelines, running on AWS (ECS Fargate, Lambda, S3). The team ships on a two-week sprint cycle on a product that changes daily. Tests ship in the same release as the feature.

Requirements

Minimum of 2 years with BS/BA; 0 years with MS/MA; 6 years with no degree
Must be a US citizen and have the ability to obtain Public Trust suitability
Automated E2E testing using Playwright (JavaScript) against a TypeScript/React front end
API/service-level functional testing using pytest (Python) against Python microservices
Black-box / behavior-based testing — testing against specifications, not implementation
Risk-based test scoping
Test case design
JavaScript/TypeScript — sufficient to write and maintain Playwright suites against a React app
Python — sufficient to write and maintain pytest suites against Python backend services
Familiarity with GitHub workflows: protected branches, PR-based CI, running suites in an existing pipeline
Familiarity with AWS at the awareness level — understanding the deployment environment tests run against (ECS, Lambda, S3) without needing to provision or manage it
Code literacy: reading and navigating TypeScript/React and Python codebases to understand what needs testing
Familiarity with Docker at the awareness level — understanding containerized services the tests exercise
Proactive and self-sufficient. Troubleshoots independently, consults subject matter experts, reads the code rather than waiting for step-by-step direction
Experience shipping automated test suites in a product environment.

Nice To Haves

Playwright video/trace recording experience
Code coverage tooling experience
AWS Certified Developer or similar
Testing documentation experience
Familiarity with document processing workflows: large file uploads, chunking, OCR pipelines
Awareness of accessibility standards (WCAG / Section 508)
Experience in regulated or security-conscious environments (federal preferred)

Responsibilities

Establish and maintain automated testing across front-end (E2E) and server-side (API) layers.
Ship automated test suites in the same release as the feature.
Design meaningful tests that would catch real failures, not token coverage.
Identify critical behavioral changes vs. cosmetic-only changes.
Spin up and operate a dev environment independently using documented procedures.
Debug test failures and distinguish real bugs from test maintenance issues.
Communicate progress clearly and daily.
Keep work small and iterative, finishing in days, not weeks.
Operate effectively on a small team with little runway before delivering.