Senior QA Automation Engineer

Buildout

1d•$130,000 - $150,000•Remote

About The Position

Buildout is seeking its first dedicated automation engineer to own end-to-end test automation across its products. This role involves setting the direction for E2E testing, covering critical user journeys, ensuring the test suite is fast and reliable, and improving the testing practices of the entire engineering team. It's a high-autonomy position where the engineer will define the strategy, partner with DevOps on CI integration, and ensure test code is treated as production code. The ideal candidate is passionate about eliminating flaky tests and enjoys empowering other engineers to improve their testing skills.

Requirements

5+ years in quality engineering, test automation, or software engineering with a strong automation focus.
Deep hands-on Playwright expertise. You've built and maintained substantial E2E suites, not just contributed tests to one.
Strong TypeScript/JavaScript proficiency. You write test code you'd be comfortable shipping to production.
CI/CD fluency. Experience integrating and operating test suites in pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, or similar), including parallelization and selective execution strategies.
A track record of fixing flakiness. You can talk concretely about how you diagnosed and eliminated unreliable tests at scale.
Independence and ownership. You can take an ambiguous mandate ("our test coverage needs to be better") and turn it into a prioritized plan you drive to completion.
Teaching instincts. You've mentored engineers, run code reviews, or otherwise raised a team's testing bar.

Nice To Haves

API-layer test automation experience (REST, contract testing).
Experience defining quality metrics (defect escape rate, coverage models) and reporting to leadership.
Familiarity with Ruby on Rails applications (our primary application stack - you won't write much Ruby, but you'll test Rails apps).
Experience with test data management, environment provisioning, or Docker-based test infrastructure.
Experience using AI-assisted tools (Claude Code, Copilot, Playwright codegen/MCP) in a testing workflow.

Responsibilities

Own the E2E test suite. Design, build, and maintain end-to-end automated tests in Playwright (TypeScript) covering our critical user journeys across products.
Backfill and prioritize coverage. Audit what we have, identify the highest-risk gaps, and systematically close them.
Kill flakiness. Own suite reliability end to end: root-cause flaky tests, establish quarantine and retry policies, manage test data and environment stability, and keep signal-to-noise high enough that a red build means something.
Shape CI integration. Partner with our DevOps engineer on where tests run in the pipeline, execution frequency, parallelization, runtime budgets, and merge/deploy gating.
Test at the right layer. Know when a check belongs at the API or integration layer instead of the browser, and structure the suite so it stays fast as it grows.
Enable the team. Coach developers on writing good Playwright tests, review test code, and establish patterns, utilities, and documentation so test authorship scales beyond you.
Report on quality. Co-own quality metrics including test coverage of critical paths, suite reliability, and defect escape rate, and communicate trends to engineering leadership.
Use modern tooling. Leverage AI-assisted development (we use Claude Code across engineering) and Playwright's evolving tooling to accelerate test authoring and maintenance.

Benefits

2 medical plans to choose from
100% coverage of employee dental and vision insurance premiums
HSA seed
Company-paid STD
Company-paid LTD
Company-paid life insurance
Company-paid telemedicine
Wellness benefit of $400/year
Flexible PTO
14 paid company holidays
Paid parental leave
Give back days
401(k) with 4% company match and immediate vesting
Monthly remote work reimbursement ($600/year)
Annual, in-person company kickoff
Challenging problems to solve with a committed and supportive team who are invested in your growth and development
A wonderfully quirky culture where you’re encouraged to bring your whole self to work