QA Automation Tech Lead

Description

Appcharge is a leading direct-to-consumer platform for app publishers. We help publishers sell digital goods directly to their users - bypassing traditional app store commissions and owning the full payment and commerce experience.

The result: higher margins, better flexibility, and a more direct relationship with end users.

Backed by $89M from leading investors and operators, we’ve grown 14x in the past year and now process over a billion dollars annually. We’re building the infrastructure that lets modern app businesses take back control of monetization – at scale

As a QA Automation Tech Lead, you will drive Appcharge’s automation strategy and testing frameworks. You’ll take end-to-end ownership of the automation architecture across all testing layers (API, UI, and E2E), from design to CI/CD integration. You’ll collaborate closely with R&D and Product, serving as the technical leader championing quality across the team.

Responsibilities

• Drive the automation strategy and framework roadmap, and be responsible for the framework architecture and technical standards (design patterns, structure, reusable infrastructure)
• Define the automation approach across testing layers: API, service-level, UI, and end-to-end, including mocking and sandbox strategies for third-party payment providers
• Own automation quality itself: test stability, flakiness reduction, execution time, and suite reliability
• Define and report quality metrics: coverage, pass rate, flakiness, and execution trends
• Integrate and evolve automation in CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) for fast, reliable feedback on every change
• Represent testability in design and architecture reviews and surface risks early (shift-left)
• Partner with developers, product, and manual QA to decide what gets automated, at which layer, and what does not
• Evaluate and introduce new tools and approaches, including AI-assisted testing workflows

Requirements

• 7+ years of hands-on experience in test automation, including 2+ years in a technical leadership or architecture-owning role - Must
• Deep expertise in Playwright and TypeScript - Must
• Proven experience designing an automation framework from the ground up or leading a major re-architecture - Must
• Experience automating complex multi-tenant or highly configurable platforms, including test design for per-tenant configuration and data isolation
• Strong API-level testing experience, including mocking/stubbing of external services
• Lead incorporation of agentic capabilities and work method
• Practical experience owning CI/CD automation integration (GitHub Actions or Jenkins)
• Mentor the automation engineers and raise the technical bar of the team: own code review standards for the automation codebase, run reviews, and grow depth through pairing and direct feedback
• Excellent analytical and debugging skills, with a track record of driving down flakiness and improving suite reliability
• Strong communication skills; able to align engineers, QA, and product around a technical direction
• Experience automating tests related to payments, checkout, or fintech systems (3DS, PSPs, APMs, webhooks, idempotency) - An Advantages