QA Engineer

Find•Herndon, VA

20h

About The Position

Exostar is seeking a detail-oriented, quality-first QA Engineer who delivers confidence at the same pace our engineering team delivers code. This is not a manual testing or checkbox role. We’re seeking a hands-on quality engineer who leads with automation, leverages AI tools to stay ahead of development, and approaches every feature with a critical, adversarial mindset before it reaches production. In this role, you will own quality across mission-critical systems in FedRAMP Moderate and CMMC Level 2 environments supporting major defense contractors. You’ll define test strategies in the face of ambiguity, build robust automation to prevent regressions, and harness AI-driven tools to create, expand, and continuously improve test coverage—far beyond what manual processes can achieve.

Requirements

2+ years of hands-on QA or SDET engineering — writing and maintaining automated tests, not just running them.
Track record of building test suites that catch real bugs, not just verifying happy paths.
Proficiency in at least one: Python (pytest), TypeScript/JavaScript (Playwright, Cypress), or C# (xUnit, NUnit).
2+ years of experience with any one the tools: Functionize, TOSCA, Selenium, Claude Code.
Experience testing REST APIs with tools like Postman, RestAssured, or custom automation frameworks.
Comfortable across the stack — API contracts, UI behavior, database state, and integration seams.
Daily user of Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, or equivalent AI tools — specifically for test generation, coverage gap analysis, and exploratory test ideation.
Clear mental model of where AI-generated tests are reliable and where they need human judgment.
Demonstrated examples of using AI to expand test coverage faster and catch edge cases that manual review missed.
Thrives in ambiguity — can derive a test strategy from incomplete requirements and ship it.
Risk-based testing instincts: knows which tests matter most and which can wait.
Clear, precise written communication — test plans, bug reports, and failure analyses.
Experience testing in regulated environments (FedRAMP, CMMC, ITAR, SOC 2, HIPAA).
Due to customer requirements, U.S. Citizenship is required.
Ability to gain and maintain Trusted Role is required

Nice To Haves

Experience with Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium for end-to-end UI automation.
Experience with BrowseStack, TestRail.
Performance and load testing experience with JMeter.
Azure DevOps pipelines or GitHub Actions for CI/CD-integrated test execution.
Security testing fundamentals: OWASP Top 10, access control validation, audit log verification.
Experience testing Angular frontends and .NET or Python backends in a microservices architecture.
Azure Government (IL2/IL4/IL5) or FedRAMP Moderate environment experience
Agentic AI testing experience — using AI tools to drive test generation, mutation testing, or fuzz testing workflows.
A portfolio or side project demonstrating AI-augmented test engineering.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain automated test suites across API, UI, integration, and regression layers using Python, TypeScript, or equivalent.
Use AI tools — Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor — as a native part of your test authoring workflow to generate test cases, expand coverage, and identify edge cases you haven't thought of yet.
Own test strategy end-to-end: requirements analysis → test design → automation → CI/CD integration → triage and maintenance.
Build and maintain test infrastructure: frameworks, fixtures, mock services, and CI pipeline integration on Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.
Perform exploratory and risk-based testing against Angular/TypeScript frontends, .NET/C# and Python backends, and Azure-hosted microservices.
Test and validate security controls in FedRAMP and CMMC-regulated environments — including access controls, audit logging, and data handling requirements.
Your test patterns become the reference standard for quality engineering across the team.
Review PRs with a quality lens — not just for bugs, but for testability, observability, and maintainability.
Share AI-augmented testing techniques: prompt-driven test generation, AI-assisted coverage analysis, and workflow automation.
Mentor engineers on writing testable code and building quality-first habits.
Write practical test documentation: test plans, coverage maps, and failure postmortems — not slide decks.
Surface quality signals that matter: flaky test patterns, coverage gaps, regression hotspots, and automation ROI.
Evaluate testing tools by using them in real environments against real data — not benchmarks.
Identify the technical debt in test infrastructure that actually slows release velocity.