QA Engineer Lead

Summary

Join Sardine, a leader in fraud prevention and AML compliance, as a hands-on QA Engineering Lead. You will shape and scale Sardine’s end-to-end quality function, leading a growing team of QA engineers while contributing technically. This 70% IC and 30% management role involves collaborating with Product, Sales, and Engineering to ensure product robustness, scalability, and reliability. You will own and evolve the QA function, build automated test frameworks, develop test plans, and partner with engineers to embed quality into the development lifecycle. The role requires strong leadership, technical expertise, and a commitment to continuous improvement. This remote position is based in Brazil, with specific city requirements.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience in QA or software engineering roles with a strong testing focus, ideally in high-growth startup environments
• 2+ years of formal management or team lead experience, including mentoring QA engineers
• Experience working with distributed or international teams
• Expertise in building end-to-end test automation for APIs, web frontend and mobile SDKs
• Proficiency with modern test frameworks (e.g., Cypress, Selenium, Playwright)
• Comfort writing tests in languages like Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript
• Solid understanding of CI/CD workflows and how to integrate automated tests
• Strong communicator with a bias toward action, ownership, and continuous improvement

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the QA function across our products, including test framework, test automation, manual QA practices, and continuous integration
• Build a robust, scalable, and maintainable automated test framework for backend APIs and frontend applications
• Develop test plans, cases, and data strategies for complex features across distributed systems
• Partner with engineers to shift testing left and embed quality into the dev lifecycle
• Partner with DevOps and Engineering to embed quality gates into our CI/CD and release pipelines
• Establish and track quality KPIs such as defect density, regression rates, and test coverage
• Promote a culture of quality and champion QA best practices across the organization
• Lead and mentor QA engineers while contributing hands-on to test development

Benefits

• Generous compensation in cash and equity
• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested
• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture
• Flexible paid time off, Year-end break, Self care days off
• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific
• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific
• MacBook Pro delivered to your door
• One-time stipend to set up a home office — desk, chair, screen, etc
• Monthly meal stipend
• Monthly social meet-up stipend
• Annual health and wellness stipend
• Annual Learning stipend
• Unlimited access to an expert financial advisory