QA Lead

Skydance • Austin, TX

1d • $70,000 - $90,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Reporting to the Head of Engineering, the QA Lead will own test strategy and execution across our titles, serving as the connective tissue between our development teams and external test partners. The goal: ensure every game we ship meets the creative vision of its team and the quality bar of Paramount Games. This role is a fit for someone who thinks like an engineer about quality — building tools, automating where possible, instrumenting the pipeline — and who is curious about how AI and ML can evolve how games are tested. We're looking for someone who wants to evaluate, prototype, and integrate AI-assisted tooling thoughtfully into a real production QA practice.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional QA experience on software projects, with 3+ years in a QA Lead role.
• Experience leading internal test teams and/or overseeing external test partners.
• Functional and usability testing experience across multiple gaming platforms and genres.
• Fluent with Jira (or equivalent) for tracking work, managing assignments, and pulling data for reports.
• Solid grounding in QA concepts, terminology, tooling, and debugging workflows.
• Experience with 1st party compliance and certification testing.
• Comfort with at least one scripting language (Python, JavaScript, C#, or similar) for writing automation, parsing logs, or building small internal tools — you don't need to be a full SWE, but "I can't code at all" isn't a fit.
• Working knowledge of CI/CD concepts and how automated tests fit into a build pipeline.
• Genuine curiosity about applied AI/ML in a QA context, and the judgment to tell hype from substance.
• Strong knowledge of console platforms, peripherals, PC hardware/software, and the standard Microsoft Office toolkit.
• Ability to work independently, juggle priorities, and execute without constant supervision.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills.
• High school diploma or equivalent.

Nice To Haves

• Associate or bachelor's degree in a technical field, or equivalent experience.
• Hands-on experience building test automation frameworks (UI, API, or gameplay automation).
• Experience with AI-assisted developer or QA tooling (Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, agentic test tools, LLM-powered triage, etc.) and a point of view on where it helps and where it doesn't.
• Familiarity with game-specific automation approaches — bots, replay systems, deterministic sims, telemetry-driven testing.
• Familiarity with Perforce.
• Familiarity with Unreal Engine and/or Unity.
• Experience working with telemetry, crash reporting, and analytics pipelines.
• Understanding of the software test cycle and iterative development practices.

Responsibilities

• Plan, develop, and oversee the execution of project test plans across one or more titles, ensuring work lands on time and at the quality bar the studio sets. This includes authoring and maintaining test plans for partners to execute, collaborating with those partners on scope and expectations, reporting progress, and ensuring deliverables meet studio standards. You'll also help onboard new partner team members to studio policies and processes, and develop your own team through training, feedback, and hands-on coaching.
• Partner with development to provide testing support and feedback across gameplay systems, content, and game balance. You'll build and execute test strategies in lockstep with the engineering & production leadership and represent QA in cross-discipline meetings to ensure testing priorities track with project development priorities.
• Bring an engineering mindset to the QA function. Identify where automation, tooling, or better instrumentation can replace repetitive manual effort. Work with engineering to integrate tests into CI, improve build verification, and shorten feedback loops. Maintain and improve the bug database, ensure issues are well-formed and actionable, and surface major or blocking issues to development immediately.
• Explore how AI tooling can extend the QA practice — test case generation, log triage, crash clustering, automated repro, smarter bug deduplication, AI-assisted exploratory testing. You'll be expected to evaluate tools critically, prototype where it makes sense, and bring the rest of the team along.
• Own the operational backbone of QA: 1st party certification coordination with Production and Development, clear and concise status reporting, and proactive prioritization based on where the project actually is.

Benefits

• bonus
• benefits

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: High school or GED