The highlights
· Join the team that provides Australia’s best-loved grants administration system
· Excellent opportunity to apply your skills and make a difference
· A new opportunity in 2026 with a progressive and innovative social enterprise!
· Full time, fixed term contract for 12 months (with genuine potential to extend)
Use your Testing and QA skills to create far-reaching social change
Calling all Quality Assurance and Test Engineering professionals – Are you tired of the corporate grind? Would you like to make a difference in the community you live in? Have we got the job for you!
This position offers a rare opportunity to extend your career in a dynamic and successful social enterprise. You can help us maintain our software’s position at the top of its class in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. You can have it all! Stimulating work, great conditions and a positive impact through your work.
About Us
SmartyGrants is a market-leading SaaS product that helps grantmakers distribute billions of dollars of funding each year.
Our Community, the company behind SmartyGrants, provides advice, connections, training and easy-to-use tech tools for people and organisations working to build stronger communities. Our vision centres on social inclusion and social equity. Our dream is that every Australian can leave their front door and stroll or wheel to a community group which suits their interests, passions and needs – or log on to do the same.
About the role
We’re seeking an experienced QA professional to take ownership of quality across our platform. We have a growing test automation base – including Selenium and Playwright suites – with automated testing built into our software development lifecycle and established regression testing practices. As the platform grows and AI-assisted development shifts more effort into review and validation, we’re investing in greater strategy, structure and consistency in how quality is assured.
This is where you come in: a newly created role bringing a single point of ownership to that work. You will take a capable but distributed testing practice and give it a coherent strategy, framework and governance layer. This is a 12-month contract, with genuine potential to extend or convert to a permanent position.
The role is deliberately hands-on: you will run testing yourself while shaping the strategy, tooling and discipline that lift quality across a platform thousands of grantmakers depend on. This is not a direct-from-a-distance role – you will be in the detail and on the tools, especially early on.
What we need you to do
Assess and align (first months)
Perform UAT and manual testing across active work, both to support delivery and to build a genuine understanding of the platform
Review our existing Selenium and Playwright coverage and regression practices, assessing what is covered and what is missing
Formalise the QA practice
Author a pragmatic test strategy and framework that brings structure to our existing testing effort
Improve traceability between requirements and tests
Introduce or embed test management tooling (for example Zephyr or Xray) to bring our regression and test assets into a single, maintainable system
Refine how AI is used in testing (where it adds leverage and where it introduces risk) and the evidence standards that apply to its use
Strengthen release sign-off and the governance around quality decisions at release
Operate and mature
Own the testing system on an ongoing basis – coverage, reusability, maintenance and QA metrics
Direct the extension of automation and its integration into CI/CD, working with our engineers rather than building everything yourself
Formalise UAT and end-to-end testing
Coach business analysts and stream teams so testing becomes a shared capability with common standards
As with most jobs at Our Community, it’s impossible to provide an exhaustive list of everything you’ll be doing as part of this role. As our organisation and platforms evolve, you may need to evolve with them or find other ways to plug the gaps.
If you like to stick closely to job descriptions or have a “not my job” mentality, this is probably not the role for you. On the other hand, if you’re excited by challenges, willing to give most things a go and know how to fill your own knowledge gaps when the need arises, then this job will be a good fit.
What you will bring
Tertiary qualifications in Information Technology or a related discipline or commensurate experience in a similar environment
Deep knowledge of testing practices, including automated testing, requirements-to-test traceability, and CI/CD test integration
Hands-on experience running UAT and manual testing, not just overseeing it
Confident reading and assessing existing test automation (e.g. Selenium, Playwright) to judge coverage and direct where it should be extended
Hands-on use of AI tooling in a testing workflow with a clear sense of where it holds up and where it doesn’t
Working knowledge of security best-practices as they apply to testing
Skilled at reading logs/stack traces to triage defects on a Java/Linux stack
A belief in and commitment to our Manifesto.
On top of the above technical skills and experience, you will of course bring strong planning, prioritisation and organisation skills together with high level written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills.
You have well-developed conceptual and analytical skills and can demonstrate your experience authoring test strategies.
People would describe you as a natural values-based leader, who relishes the opportunity to coach/mentor stream teams to lift overall capability. Your flexible approach and high attention to detail will see you successful in this role.
Above all we want you to be a part of a unique environment where everyone contributes and worries less about official job descriptions and more about working together to get things done. We share our work, and we help each other when needed.
Other relevant information
The nature of this role is quite varied, and we know our strength comes from the diversity of our people and so we want people with different experiences and backgrounds to apply. We’d be delighted to welcome applicants from a variety of situations, including parents returning to the workforce.
Our organisation is one that is as supportive and socially conscious as it is agile and explorative. Our DNA of commercial mind and social heart captures who we are at our core. We have a great working atmosphere with an inclusive, fun work culture. Our team is full of highly collaborative, diverse and highly skilled awesome people.
The Quality Assurance Lead role reports to Executive Director, Operations and Delivery and is part of the wider IT Team of developers, business & security analysts, data scientists and support services specialists. When in the office, standard business hours are 9am to 5pm Monday – Friday, however, start and finish times are highly flexible. Currently our team is working partially from the office and partially from home or other remote locations.
To create a better work-life balance, the Our Community team works a 4-day week (pay for 5 days). We deliver 100% of the work in 80% of the time for 100% of the pay. We have high productivity, reduced stress levels, improved mental health and great team cohesion. The successful applicant will be required to work a 5-day week during the 3-month probationary period.
Our Community is located on Wurundjeri Country at 552 Victoria Street (corner of Curzon Street and Victoria Street), North Melbourne. We work in a modern, bright, art-filled, open plan office and operate in a fairly informal manner (you don’t have to dress up).
The successful candidate
Must be an Australian citizen.
Will be required to undertake a police check.
Will be subject to a probationary period of three (3) months.
How to apply:
Applications will only be accepted through our online application form (applications received by other means will not be considered).
Apply at: https://ourcommunity.smartygrants.com.au/QualityAssuranceLead_2026
Applications close: Monday 28 September 2026 at 5pm AEST.