ABOUT THE ROLE
As a Senior QA Engineer at Protagona, you will make an impact by ensuring the quality, reliability, and performance of the solutions we build for our clients. You will own test strategy end-to-end, from requirements through automation, release, and production monitoring - while keeping the end user's experience and the client's business outcomes at the center of every quality decision you make.
This is a consulting role as much as a technical one. You will be a valued member of a cross-functional delivery team, working closely with Engagement Managers, Solution Architects, and Engineers, and you will act as the quality and customer-experience voice in client-facing conversations. Strong candidates bring genuine consultative instincts: the ability to build trust with client stakeholders, ask the right product and business questions, translate technical risk into terms that matter to the client, and advocate for the end user throughout the engagement - not just execute a test plan handed to them.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Test Strategy & Planning
- Define and own the test strategy for assigned client engagements, translating business requirements, user needs, and acceptance criteria into risk-based test plans covering functional, integration, regression, performance, and data-quality testing.
- Partner with Solution Architects and Engagement Managers early in engagement planning to size QA effort, define exit/acceptance criteria, and flag testability and product risks before delivery begins.
- Establish Definition of Done and quality gates for each sprint, release, and go-live in collaboration with the delivery team, anchored in what “good” looks like from the end user's perspective.
- Champion Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) practices where appropriate, partnering with engineering to shift quality left and express acceptance criteria in business-readable terms (e.g., Gherkin/Given-When-Then).
Test Design & Execution
- Design, execute, and maintain test cases for cloud data pipelines, ETL/ELT workflows, APIs, analytics layers, and AI/ML model outputs built on AWS (Glue, Lambda, Step Functions, Redshift, SageMaker, and related services).
- Validate data quality, lineage, and transformation accuracy across ingestion, staging, and consumption layers, including reconciliation between source and target systems.
- Perform functional, regression, integration, and UAT support testing across web, mobile, API, and backend services, and coordinate structured UAT cycles with client stakeholders.
- Identify, document, and triage defects with clear reproduction steps and severity/priority classification and drive them through to resolution with engineering.
Automation & Tooling
- Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks (UI, API, and data-layer) integrated into CI/CD pipelines using tools such as AWS CodeBuild/CodePipeline, GitHub, Selenium, and pytest.
- Apply TDD and BDD frameworks (e.g., Cucumber, Behave, SpecFlow) where they add value, using them to align engineering, product, and client stakeholders around a shared, testable definition of expected behavior.
- Champion automation-first practices across engagements, prioritizing high-value, high-risk regression coverage to reduce manual testing overhead and accelerate release cycles.
- Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting checks (CloudWatch and equivalent) to support production quality and early defect detection post-release.
Consultative & Customer Experience Focus
- Act as the primary quality and customer-experience point of contact for assigned clients, communicating test status, risk, and go/no-go recommendations in clear, business-relevant language rather than technical jargon.
- Bring a genuine product mindset to every engagement - understanding not just whether a feature works, but whether it delivers the intended experience and value to the end user.
- Build trusted advisor relationships with client stakeholders, proactively surfacing quality and usability risks, asking clarifying product questions, and offering recommendations rather than waiting to be asked.
- Contribute QA and CX-related inputs to project communication plans, status reporting, and stakeholder updates alongside the Delivery Lead.
IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE
The table below outlines the experience and capability bar for this role. Candidates should demonstrate strength across all five dimensions, with depth in consultative client engagement, product/customer-experience thinking, and cloud/data & AI testing.
Dimension
Expectation at Senior Level
Experience
6-9+ years in software QA/test engineering, including 3+ years testing cloud-native or data/analytics platforms; prior consulting or client-facing delivery experience strongly preferred.
Consultative Mindset
Comfortable operating as a trusted advisor; asks probing questions about business intent and user needs; builds credibility with client stakeholders quickly and independently.
Customer Experience & Product Focus
Evaluates quality through the lens of the end user and the product's business goals, not just technical correctness; can speak fluently to usability, workflow, and experience considerations alongside functional defects.
Technical Depth
Hands-on with AWS services (Glue, Lambda, S3, Redshift, Step Functions, SageMaker); strong SQL; test automation in Python or JavaScript/TypeScript (Selenium, pytest); CI/CD integration (CodePipeline, GitHub, Jenkins); working knowledge of TDD/BDD practices and frameworks is a strong plus.
Quality Ownership & Leadership
Owns test strategy independently on medium-to-large engagements; defines quality gates and acceptance criteria without heavy oversight.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 6-9+ years of professional software QA/testing experience, including both manual and automated testing.
- Prior experience in a consulting, professional services, or client-facing delivery environment, with a demonstrated ability to build trust and credibility with external stakeholders.
- Demonstrated experience testing cloud-based data, analytics, or AI/ML solutions, ideally on AWS.
- A customer-experience and product-oriented approach to quality - comfortable evaluating not just “does it work” but “does it serve the user and the business well.”
- Proficiency with SQL and at least one scripting/programming language used for test automation (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Java).
- Experience with API testing tools (Postman, REST Assured, or equivalent) and version control (Git).
- Working knowledge of Agile/Scrum delivery and experience embedded in cross-functional delivery teams.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical risk into business-relevant language for client-facing audiences.
Preferred / Nice to Have
- Working knowledge of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and/or Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) practices and frameworks (e.g., Cucumber, SpecFlow, Behave).
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or higher (Solutions Architect, Developer, or Data Analytics specialty).
- ISTQB Certified Tester or equivalent QA certification.
- Background in UX, product management, or customer success, or direct exposure to user research and usability testing.
- Exposure to performance/load testing tools (JMeter, Locust, or equivalent) and data observability tooling.
ABOUT PROTAGONA
Protagona is an AWS-exclusive, Advanced Tier data and AI/ML consulting firm. We combine consulting rigor with deep AWS technical depth to deliver measurable outcomes for clients. Quality, and the customer experience it protects, is core to how we build client trust and our delivery reputation - this role is central to that mission.