Quality Assurance Engineer II

The New York Public Library•New York, NY

2d•$110,000 - $120,000•Hybrid

About The Position

This role is a hybrid role and requires work onsite in the NYC office three days a week. NYPL Digital's Quality Assurance team is in the middle of a meaningful shift from manual testing to an embedded quality engineering model where QA engineers work alongside product teams as active technical contributors throughout the development process. We are looking for a QA Engineer II who takes ownership of quality outcomes on their team, drives work forward with initiative and independence, and builds the automated test coverage that lets NYPL's engineers ship with confidence. This is a hands-on, project-level engineering role. Your primary output is automated tests. You'll be embedded on a cross-functional product team and responsible for understanding the quality landscape of your product area including where the risks are, where the coverage gaps are, and what to do about both. You'll collaborate closely with engineers, designers, product managers, and project managers as a quality partner from the very start of a project.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field - OR - 3+ years of equivalent experience
3 - 5 years of professional software testing or software engineering experience, with a focus on automated testing
Expertise writing and maintaining automated tests, including UI automation (e.g., Playwright) and API or backend testing (e.g., pytest)
Expertise to design test strategies for projects of moderate complexity
Leverage AI-enabled tools to improve test design, accelerate defect triage, streamline repetitive QA tasks, and increase team efficiency.
Experience identifying, documenting, and working to close test coverage gaps
Comfortable reading code and independently debugging test failures
Active code review participation, i.e., both giving and receiving substantive feedback
Strong communication skills for technical and cross-functional collaboration
A track record of driving work forward independently — identifying what needs to happen next and making it happen
Demonstrated shift-left instincts: engaging early, flagging risks proactively, and contributing to quality upstream of development
Comfortable working within CI/CD pipelines, i.e., understanding how tests run in automation, diagnosing pipeline failures, and keeping builds healthy

Responsibilities

Write and maintain automated tests as primary output including UI tests (e.g., Playwright) and API and backend tests (e.g., pytest)
Design comprehensive test strategies for assigned projects, from kickoff through delivery
Identify automation coverage gaps, document them clearly, and work collaboratively with engineers to close them
Review engineering PRs with a quality lens; flag test coverage gaps and create follow-up tickets
Independently debug and resolve test failures — distinguishing flaky tests, environment issues, and genuine bugs
Read product requirements and review designs at project kickoff; flag risks early and begin drafting test cases before code is written
Invest in planning: think ahead about upcoming work, proactively align on testing priorities with engineers and PMs, and come to sprint ceremonies with a clear point of view on what quality work the team needs next
Communicate clearly and proactively when critical test failures block deployments or when issues are identified in production
Participate actively in incident response; contribute a quality and testing perspective to blameless postmortems and translate findings into follow-up automation or coverage work
Mentor other QA engineers through code review, pairing, and knowledge sharing
Experiment with and adopt AI-assisted tools to accelerate test authoring, debugging, and coverage work; share findings with the team