Quality Assurance Lead

Airlock Digital•San Francisco, CA

2d•$140,240 - $175,300•Remote

About The Position

Airlock Digital is seeking a Quality Assurance Lead to serve as the foundational quality leader for its product. This role is a hands-on, player-coach position responsible for defining, executing, and evolving quality assurance practices for a complex, heavy integration product while leading a small QA team. The successful candidate will bring deep technical expertise and prior experience building and leading QA teams, while remaining actively involved in day-to-day quality execution. This role partners closely with Product to ensure quality is embedded throughout the product lifecycle and scales effectively as the organization grows.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or equivalent practical experience preferred.
8+ years of experience in software quality assurance, test engineering, or closely related roles.
3+ years of experience leading or managing QA teams, including hiring, mentoring, and team development.
Demonstrated experience building and scaling QA practices or functions, not just operating within mature systems.
Experience working on complex, integration-heavy software products, rather than simple standalone or website-only applications.
Strong expertise in manual and automated testing methodologies.
Experience testing across Windows, Linux, and macOS environments.
Proven experience with integration testing, system testing, and environment-dependent behavior.
Hands-on experience with QA automation and tooling, including Playwright, Cypress, TestComplete, and Postman.
Proficiency with issue tracking and source control tools, including Jira, Git, and Bitbucket.
Comfortable operating as a player-coach, balancing hands-on execution with team leadership.
Demonstrated initiative and ability to adapt to changing business needs.
Ability to set standards, provide direction, and influence outcomes with both direct reports and peers.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate quality risks and trade-offs.
Pragmatic, detail-oriented, and comfortable operating in ambiguity within a scaling organization.
Ability to work effectively in a remote, distributed team environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with endpoint software, security products, and low-level system interactions (e.g., filter drivers).
Experience growing a QA function from a small team into a larger, more structured organization.

Responsibilities

Quality Ownership & Execution Own end-to-end quality assurance for Airlock Digital’s product, serving as the primary point of accountability for product quality outcomes.
Design, execute, and maintain manual and automated test coverage across functional, integration, system, regression, performance, and environment-specific scenarios.
Investigate and diagnose complex, hard-to-reproduce issues, including customer-specific and environment-dependent defects.
Remain hands-on in testing and quality analysis, particularly for high-risk or complex areas.
Integration & Environment-Centric Testing Develop and execute testing strategies for a highly interoperable product operating across diverse endpoint environments and third-party integrations.
Ensure quality assurance extends beyond the application itself to include the environments in which the product runs, including end-user machines and configurations.
Anticipate edge cases and failure modes that arise only in real-world customer deployments.
QA Standards, Frameworks & Metrics Define and implement scalable QA standards, methodologies, and workflows aligned with product development and release processes.
Establish quality metrics, defect triage practices, and release readiness criteria.
Build a QA foundation that supports future growth while maintaining or improving overall product quality.
Team Leadership & Development Lead and support a small Quality Assurance team Provide day-to-day guidance, prioritization, and technical direction.
Support onboarding, mentoring, performance feedback, and skill development.
Apply prior experience building and scaling teams to help shape the future QA organization.
Product Collaboration Partner closely with Product to influence design decisions, improve testability, and embed quality earlier in the product lifecycle.
Provide clear, actionable insights into quality risks, systemic issues, and recurring defects.
Act as a thought partner, helping Product anticipate quality challenges as the product evolves.
Tooling, Compliance & Release Readiness Select, implement, and maintain QA tools and frameworks, including Playwright, Cypress, TestComplete, Postman, Jira, Git, and Bitbucket.
Prepare QA artefacts supporting release approvals and audits.
Contribute to quality practices aligned with organizational and compliance requirements, including ISO 27001, where applicable.
Future-State Contribution Help define the long-term QA vision, standards, and operating model.
Act as a trusted advisor to Product leadership on quality strategy, risk, and scale.
Support the growth and maturity of the QA function as the product and organization expand.