Quality Assurance Engineer

Braven • Chicago, IL

6d • $92,000 - $101,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

Braven is a national nonprofit dedicated to preparing promising college students for successful careers. To support its ambitious goal of serving 80,000–100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is seeking a Quality Assurance Engineer. This role is crucial for ensuring that the student- and staff-facing software is reliable, accessible, and user-friendly. The Quality Assurance Engineer will be an integral part of the Engineering team, responsible for developing test plans, increasing automated test coverage, and collaborating with engineers on unit and integration tests. The position aims to balance the need for agility in feature delivery with the implementation of robust quality practices and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• 3+ years in QA/software testing, or 2+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• At least 1 year working with test automation.
• Playwright (or Cypress), API testing, Database, Git/GitHub, GitHub Actions/CI, accessibility testing (WCAG).

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s Degree in a technical field or equivalent professional experience
• Experience with performance testing, observability (e.g., logs/metrics), and test data management.
• Familiarity with Jira and structured defect triage.
• Familiarity with REST API tools (e.g., Postman).
• Basic experience with Python or Ruby on Rails, and Heroku environments and modern web app architectures.
• Strong organizational and task management skills, with the ability to prioritize work, ensure attention to detail, and make sound technical decisions independently.
• Flexible and solutions-oriented, with strong problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt to changing priorities.
• Excellent communication skills, bridging technical and non-technical teams and managing stakeholder expectations effectively.
• Demonstrated commitment to building strong and welcoming cultures that help to develop others.
• Exemplification of Braven’s core values.
• Experience that has informed your belief in Braven’s mission and has prepared you to work with, or for, Braven’s student Fellow population.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain UI and API automation (Playwright preferred).
• Partner with engineers to write/expand unit and integration tests and improve testability.
• Increase automation coverage and reliability (flakiness control, data management).
• Design and execute test plans and test cases for web and API features across key integrations (Salesforce, Canvas, Pathify, LinkedIn, Zoom).
• Perform cross-browser/device and accessibility (WCAG) testing; log clear, actionable defects.
• Own quality checks in GitHub Actions/CI; implement sensible gating and fast feedback loops.
• Coordinate regression and release verification for scheduled launches; drive root-cause analysis.
• Validate data flows with SQL; use logs/observability to detect regressions.
• Document test cases, patterns, and QA standards; champion pragmatic process improvements.
• Other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Unlimited vacation time
• Org-wide holidays
• Week-long shutdowns in July and the end of the calendar year (minimum of 19 days per year)
• $25,000 in lifetime Carrot benefits for fertility, family-building, and hormonal health
• Match of your 401K contribution up to 5% of your base annual salary, starting your first full month
• Coverage of 85% of health insurance premium for employee and dependents
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• A one-month paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree