QA Automation Engineer

QA Engineer — Automation & AI Testing | Auckland

The Company

This is a professional services consultancy on a deliberate journey to become a genuinely digital business — embedding technology, data and AI into the core of how it delivers, not treating them as an afterthought. The Digital Team sits at the heart of that mission, and this role sits inside it.

The Opportunity

This is a build job, not a babysitting one. The SaaS Greenfield Platform is being built from scratch, and the team needs an Automation Engineer to own the testing strategy and automation suite from the ground up — no inherited technical debt, no legacy mess to untangle. You'll be joining a tight, cross-functional team where product, engineering, data and AI work together rather than in silos, moving at pace on something that genuinely matters to the business.

What makes this role particularly interesting is the AI testing element. The platform integrates with Claude API, and building a framework to test prompt-based behaviour and AI-generated outputs is a genuinely novel engineering challenge — not a problem with a textbook answer.

The Day-to-Day

You'll own the automated test coverage across unit, integration and end-to-end layers, working primarily with Vitest and Playwright. But this isn't a role where QA shows up at the end of the sprint to validate what's already been built — you'll be embedded in refinement and sprint ceremonies, working alongside developers to make sure testability is baked in from the moment requirements are defined.

Alongside the automation suite, you'll perform manual and exploratory testing, close existing coverage gaps across the platform's database and edge functions, and flag quality risks and technical debt early and clearly. The AI testing framework will become a meaningful part of what you build and own — covering Claude API integrations, prompt evaluation and the inherently non-deterministic nature of AI outputs.

What You'll Need

• At least 8+ years in Automation test engineering, with hands-on experience building automated test suites across unit, integration and end-to-end layers
• Strong hands-on experience with Vitest and Playwright
• Solid test planning and test case design skills
• Confident with API testing and mocking
• Comfortable with manual and exploratory testing alongside automated coverage
• Familiar with Git/GitHub workflows
• Experience integrating QA practices into agile or sprint-based teams

Nice to Have

• Prior experience testing AI or LLM-powered features — prompt evaluation, output validation, handling non-determinism
• Postgres experience, including RLS and migrations
• CI/CD experience, particularly GitHub Actions
• Experience shaping QA processes in a small or fast-growing team
• Comfortable using AI coding assistants to accelerate test development

The Right Fit

Someone with a meticulous eye for edge cases and gaps others walk past, who communicates quality risks clearly and doesn't wait to be asked before acting on them. You'll be methodical when working through ambiguous failures, collaborative enough to work closely with developers throughout the sprint, and pragmatic enough to balance thoroughness with the realities of delivery pace.

On Offer

A rare chance to define and build a testing function from scratch, in a fast-moving team working on genuinely interesting problems — including one of the more novel QA challenges around right now in AI output testing. Modern, collaborative office environment with a team that values quality as a first-class concern, not a final hurdle.

If building something from the ground up in a team that takes quality seriously appeals to you, get in touch.

We are only considering candidates who are on the ground here in New Zealand. If you've read this far and you're curious to learn more or if you're intrigued and would like to throw your hat in the ring then please apply. We would love to hear from you.