Senior QA Automation Engineer

About the role

The Senior QA Automation Engineer at Watu, based in Nairobi, ensures the quality and reliability of the organization's information systems through automated testing. The role reports to the Head of System Quality Assurance and covers designing and implementing test frameworks, functional and regression testing, and working with cross-functional teams to improve system performance and usability.

Key responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain scalable automated test frameworks with Playwright
• Lead test automation strategy and ensure alignment with QA and development goals
• Run functional, regression and integration testing across application modules
• Validate UI consistency, accessibility and user experience
• Analyze backend processes, validate SQL data integrity and troubleshoot data issues
• Manage testing environments with Docker Compose and integrate tests into CI/CD pipelines
• Review code and test implementations, document test plans, cases and reports
• Mentor junior QA engineers and propose process improvements

Required profile

• 5+ years of experience in automated testing with TypeScript/JavaScript
• Expert SQL, including complex query design and optimization
• Extensive Playwright experience, including building frameworks from scratch
• OOP principles applied in test automation architecture
• Git and branching strategies
• English at upper-intermediate level or higher

Required skills

• Docker Compose and CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions or GitLab CI)
• Advanced REST and GraphQL API testing
• SQL and ORM tools such as Prisma
• Optional: UI/UX evaluation, frontend TypeScript, Java, Selenium, log analysis, security aspects, financial transaction testing