Staff Quality Engineer

Ridgeline•Reno, NY

21h•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Staff Quality Engineer at Ridgeline, you’ll ensure the correctness and reliability of our Investment Accounting platform. The work involves complex accounting workflows where subtle behavioral issues can have meaningful operational and financial impact. This role is focused first on accounting and operational understanding: recognizing how investment accounting workflows behave in practice, identifying where subtle failures can emerge, and independently evaluating whether outcomes are operationally correct and client-ready. This is not a downstream validation role. QE here is a continuous partner from requirements through release, engaged at every stage where accounting correctness is at stake. You'll work closely with Product Managers and engineers to define expected behavior, validate correctness, and strengthen the quality of what reaches clients. As AI continues to reshape how teams build and validate software, Ridgeline is incorporating tools like Claude Code and Cursor to increase iteration speed and expand engineering leverage, making strong accounting judgment and independent evaluation of system behavior even more important. At Ridgeline, how we work matters as much as what we build. Ridgeliners act like owners, choose growth over comfort, and communicate with transparency. We assume positive intent, bias toward action, and bring solutions—not just problems. We celebrate wins, learn from setbacks, and thrive in a resilient, collaborative, high-performing culture. If this excites you, we’d love to meet you! You must be work authorized in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship.

Requirements

Strong experience in investment accounting, portfolio accounting, fund accounting, or back-office investment operations, with deep familiarity with workflows including reconciliations, accruals, tax lot accounting, corporate action processing, and multi-currency accounting
Ability to identify financial or operational risks that may not surface through standard functional testing alone
Strong judgment around how accounting systems should behave in complex, high-scale, or edge-case scenarios
Experience working closely with software teams, Product Managers, business analysts, or implementation teams supporting financial systems
Ability to reason through workflow dependencies, system behavior, and areas of elevated business risk
Strong communication skills and ability to clearly articulate expected outcomes, edge cases, and quality concerns across technical and non-technical audiences
Demonstrated ownership mindset and ability to operate independently in fast-moving environments
Curiosity and willingness to engage deeply with modern software development practices and quality engineering approaches
Comfort adapting to evolving software development workflows, including the growing use of AI-assisted tooling

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in Quality Engineering, software testing, or test automation
Experience using or supporting portfolio accounting platforms or investment operations systems
CPA, accounting degree, or formal accounting education
Experience with SaaS fintech or investment management platforms
Familiarity with API testing, automation frameworks, CI/CD practices, or test-driven development approaches
Experience mentoring teammates or influencing quality practices across organizations

Responsibilities

Serve as an independent evaluator of accounting correctness — assessing whether system behavior is financially sound and operationally reliable in real client workflows, not simply confirming that functionality works as implemented
Engage as a co-equal partner from requirements through release, contributing a quality and risk lens at every stage rather than validating outcomes at the end of a build cycle
Operate independently on assigned features — leading test planning, engaging in requirements and design discussions, and making sound quality judgments — without requiring close methodology coaching
Work with Product Managers to define expected accounting outcomes and acceptance criteria — establishing what correct behavior looks like before and throughout implementation
Participate in requirements and design reviews as an independent quality voice, surfacing workflow gaps, missing edge cases, and cross-system risk before implementation begins
Evaluate investment accounting workflows through a risk and correctness lens, identifying edge cases and behavioral failure modes early in the development lifecycle
Help teams distinguish between technically valid implementations and accounting outcomes that are operationally correct and client-ready
Lead domain-focused test planning for workflows including accruals, reconciliations, tax lot accounting, corporate actions, and multi-currency accounting
Validate accounting outcomes against expected financial behavior and real client operating workflows
Collaborate with engineering teams to improve confidence in test coverage and release readiness across complex accounting functionality
Build strong partnerships across Product, Engineering, and Quality Engineering rooted in transparency, accountability, and shared ownership
Mentor teammates on domain-specific quality considerations and thoughtful, risk-based testing approaches