QA Automation Engineer (GFW - QA - 20260310)

Products You Will Test

• You will work across the following products and platforms:


• Interactive maps showing vessel tracks, fishing activity heatmaps, encounters on the high seas, port visits, and carrier vessel activity — rendered through time using our latest map platform;
• Vessel identity and carrier vessel tracking features, including new layers and datasets added to the core map over the past several years;
• The Public/Private APIs — a major strategic expansion now providing external developers and researchers with programmatic access to datasets and services. API quality, reliability, and contract testing are a core responsibility of this role.
• Tools for users to upload, display, and analyze their own datasets alongside our datasets

Our Stack

• Playwright and Vitest (primary E2E and integration automation framework — required)
• Cypress (used on select products — experience is a plus)
• Selenium (legacy; knowledge helpful but not the focus)
• Jest and axios


Front-end
• Modern JavaScript / TypeScript (ES6+)
• React (hooks) and Redux
• Mapping and dataviz: Deck.gl, D3, turf
• CSS3, CSS Modules


Backend & Infrastructure
• Node.js (Nest and Koa), Go, Python, PostgreSQL, Clickhouse
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Docker
• CI/CD: Google Cloud Build


Tooling & Collaboration
• Git and GitHub
• Postman

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain automated test suites for our front-end products and public API — this is the primary and non-negotiable function of this role:


• Lead end-to-end test automation using Playwright, covering functional, regression, cross-browser, and performance scenarios;
• Own API test automation: write and maintain contract tests, functional tests, and integration tests for GFW's public and internal APIs;
• Integrate automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines (Cloudbuild), ensuring tests run reliably on every relevant trigger;
• Design and document test cases for user stories; validate acceptance criteria with the product team before implementation begins;
• Define and maintain test suite organization — smoke, regression, and full suites — and determine which cases warrant automation vs. manual execution;
• Run and maintain regression suites when new features are released or underlying data versions change;
• Conduct periodic regression runs on production environments;


• Work closely with the product team during user story definition to ensure testability and clear acceptance criteria from the start; Creating a test plan for every release;


• Report bugs clearly in the issue tracking system and follow up until resolution working closedy with product to understand impact of the bug and define priority;


• Define, record, and report on QA metrics to assess coverage, test reliability, and areas of product risk;


• Advance overall QA strategy, tooling, and infrastructure over time.

Required Technical Skills

• Automation is the core of this role. Candidates who cannot demonstrate hands-on automation experience will not be considered.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience building and maintaining automated test suites for production web applications — please be prepared to discuss specific projects and outcomes;
• Proven, recent experience with Playwright for end-to-end browser automation (required);
• Solid experience with API test automation: writing contract tests, functional API tests, and integration tests;
• Experience working in Agile teams with sprint-based delivery;
• Experience with CI/CD integration of automated tests (GitHub Actions or equivalent);
• Experience with performance and cross-browser testing;
• Experience with test plan and test case development, including defining what to automate vs. test manually;
• Willing to comb through a complex network of interdependent tools, resources, user roles, and permissions;
• Detail-oriented, with a mindset geared toward finding edge cases and breaking things.


Preferred Technical Skills
• Experience with Cypress in addition to Playwright;
• Experience testing non-traditional, data-heavy applications using maps, charts, heatmaps, or other data visualizations;
• Strong proficiency with Git and modern branching strategies;
• Familiarity with Docker and containerized test environments;
• Experience with cloud platforms, particularly Google Cloud Platform;
• Open-source collaboration experience.


Communication & Collaboration Skills
• •Strong written and verbal communication in English — most day-to-day collaboration is async and written. Having also good verbal Spanish is a plus;
• Comfortable working remotely and independently in a small, fast-moving organization;
• Proactive and highly organized — owns tasks end-to-end without needing to be chased;
• Team player who is willing to teach and learn across disciplines;
• Intellectually curious and open to suggesting and evaluating new tools, approaches, or strategies;
• Flexible and able to adapt to shifting priorities and evolving requirements;
• Able to communicate clearly with a wide range of stakeholders — from engineers to product managers to senior leadership;
• Comfortable managing multiple ongoing tasks, sharing estimations, raising risks and meeting deadlines.