SmartDev

Role Description The Senior QA Engineer / QA Lead will own VeryPay's end-to-end quality strategy — leading the QA function, mentoring the team, and ensuring our platform meets the highest standards of correctness, reliability, and security before every release. This role combines hands-on technical depth with team leadership. - Define the test architecture. - Drive automation investment. - Champion quality culture across engineering. - Act as the primary quality voice in cross-functional discussions. This role requires someone who can pair deep technical QA expertise with practical knowledge of AI-assisted testing workflows. Qualifications - 5+ years of software QA experience with proven ownership of both manual and automated testing on production-grade systems. - Strong hands-on experience with test automation frameworks: Selenium, Appium, Playwright, Cypress, or equivalent. - Expertise in API testing (REST/JSON) using tools such as Postman, RestAssured, or Karate. - Experience designing test strategies for microservices architectures, including contract testing (Pact or equivalent) and service mesh validation. - Proficiency in at least one scripting language: Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Java, for test framework development. - Hands-on experience with at least one AI-assisted testing or development tool (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Testim, Mabl, Applitools, or similar). - Demonstrated ability to use LLMs (e.g., Claude, GPT-4) to generate test plans, identify edge cases, and review test coverage against specifications. - Understanding of where AI augmentation is appropriate in a QA workflow and where it must be restricted. - Demonstrated experience leading or managing a QA team — setting direction, mentoring engineers, and owning quality outcomes end-to-end. - Ability to define and evolve a QA strategy aligned with product roadmap and engineering capacity. - Experience driving QA KPI frameworks: defect escape rate, automation coverage ratios, test flakiness reduction, and release confidence metrics. - Proven track record of cross-functional influence. - Fluency in Agile/Scrum environments with direct experience integrating test automation into CI/CD pipelines. - Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills. - Excellent communication skills. Requirements - Design end-to-end test strategies covering functional, integration, regression, performance, and security test layers across web, mobile, and backend services. - Build and maintain robust manual and automated test suites for NFC transaction flows, card lifecycle operations, wallet movements, and MMO integrations. - Ensure test coverage spans microservice boundaries including contract and integration testing at API gateways. - Design and execute multi-device test scenarios covering POS terminals, NFC card readers, mobile apps, and USSD channels. - Validate multi-tenant isolation. - Leverage AI tools to accelerate test case generation and regression suite maintenance. - Use AI-based log analysis and anomaly detection to proactively identify quality risks. - Design prompts and workflows for AI-assisted exploratory testing. - Stay current on evolving AI testing tooling. - Test NFC card transaction authorization flows and validate double-entry ledger integrity. - Perform security-focused testing on payment token flows and PCI-relevant data handling. - Collaborate with the HSM and cryptographic infrastructure teams. - Serve as the QA point of contact for production incidents. - Maintain a structured hotfix verification workflow. - Analyse production logs and monitoring dashboards. - Maintain a living production issue register. - Partner with product managers to translate feature requirements into testable specifications. - Work directly with backend and frontend engineers during development cycles. - Facilitate structured QA handoff processes. - Maintain open communication channels with development and product teams. - Own the overall QA strategy for VeryPay's platform. - Lead, mentor, and grow a QA team. - Drive test architecture decisions. - Act as the QA representative in sprint planning and architecture reviews. - Build a quality culture across the broader engineering team. - Implement and maintain quality gates in CI/CD pipelines. - Define and track QA KPIs. - Own incident post-mortems from the quality perspective. - Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers and integration partners. Benefits - Work on a technically challenging, real-world fintech platform. - A team that treats quality engineering as first-class. - Active investment in AI-augmented development workflows. - Competitive compensation commensurate with experience and location. - Flexible remote-first work environment with a collaborative culture.

• Join the delivery team and own the space between business intent and technical execution. • Work directly with clients to shape requirements, protect delivery scope, and ensure clarity for the team. • Write User Stories consumed directly by developers and QA, facilitate 3 Amigos sessions before each sprint. • Act as the primary liaison between the client and the delivery team, maintaining clarity, honesty, and professionalism. • Gather, analyse, and document business and functional requirements through structured workshops, interviews, and collaborative sessions. • Review wireframes and user flows, annotating for requirement alignment and flagging gaps. • Ensure all stories meet the Definition of Ready before sprint planning. • Participate actively in sprint planning, backlog refinement, daily standups, and retrospectives. • Maintain requirement traceability from business need through to acceptance test.

• Own the space between business intent and technical execution. • Work directly with clients to shape requirements and protect delivery scope. • Write User Stories consumed directly by developers and QA. • Facilitate 3 Amigos sessions before each sprint. • Serve as the primary liaison between the client and the internal delivery team. • Lead scope conversations directly and assess new requests against MVP boundaries. • Participate actively in sprint planning, backlog refinement, daily standups, and retrospectives. • Review deliverables against acceptance criteria during QA and UAT.

Role Description The Senior QA Engineer / QA Lead will own VeryPay's end-to-end quality strategy — leading the QA function, mentoring the team, and ensuring our platform meets the highest standards of correctness, reliability, and security before every release. This role combines hands-on technical depth with team leadership: - Define the test architecture. - Drive automation investment. - Champion quality culture across engineering. - Act as the primary quality voice in cross-functional discussions. This role requires someone who can pair deep technical QA expertise with practical knowledge of AI-assisted testing workflows — from intelligent test generation to autonomous regression coverage. Qualifications - 5+ years of software QA experience with proven ownership of both manual and automated testing on production-grade systems. - Strong hands-on experience with test automation frameworks: Selenium, Appium, Playwright, Cypress, or equivalent. - Expertise in API testing (REST/JSON) using tools such as Postman, RestAssured, or Karate. - Experience designing test strategies for microservices architectures, including contract testing (Pact or equivalent) and service mesh validation. - Proficiency in at least one scripting language: Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Java, for test framework development. - Hands-on experience with at least one AI-assisted testing or development tool (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Testim, Mabl, Applitools, or similar). - Demonstrated ability to use LLMs (e.g., Claude, GPT-4) to generate test plans, identify edge cases, and review test coverage against specifications. - Understanding of where AI augmentation is appropriate in a QA workflow and where it must be restricted (e.g., never in direct HSM or cryptographic validation paths). - Demonstrated experience leading or managing a QA team — setting direction, mentoring engineers, and owning quality outcomes end-to-end. - Ability to define and evolve a QA strategy aligned with product roadmap and engineering capacity — balancing automation investment, manual coverage, and risk tolerance. - Experience driving QA KPI frameworks: defect escape rate, automation coverage ratios, test flakiness reduction, and release confidence metrics. - Proven track record of cross-functional influence — able to negotiate quality requirements with product and engineering stakeholders without formal authority. - Fluency in Agile/Scrum environments with direct experience integrating test automation into CI/CD pipelines. - Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills with the ability to isolate defects across distributed, asynchronous service architectures. - Excellent communication skills; able to translate complex technical QA findings into clear risk summaries for non-technical stakeholders. Requirements - Design end-to-end test strategies covering functional, integration, regression, performance, and security test layers across web, mobile, and backend services. - Build and maintain robust manual and automated test suites for NFC transaction flows, card lifecycle operations, wallet movements, and MMO integrations. - Ensure test coverage spans microservice boundaries (user, merchant, device, wallet, product, transaction, card services) including contract and integration testing at API gateways. - Design and execute multi-device test scenarios covering POS terminals, NFC card readers, mobile apps, and USSD channels - validating consistent behavior across hardware variants and OS versions. - Validate multi-tenant isolation: ensure that organisation, school, merchant, and agent tenant configurations produce correct, independent behavior without data leakage or cross-tenant interference. - Leverage AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Testim, Mabl, or equivalent LLM-assisted frameworks) to accelerate test case generation, coverage gap analysis, and regression suite maintenance. - Use AI-based log analysis and anomaly detection to proactively identify quality risks across CI/CD pipelines. - Design prompts and workflows for AI-assisted exploratory testing, including structured test scenario generation from product specifications and API schemas. - Stay current on evolving AI testing tooling and champion adoption of practical, secure AI workflows within the QA function - with appropriate caution in sensitive cryptographic and payment-critical paths. - Test NFC card transaction authorization flows, offline payment scenarios, and deferred HSM verification paths. - Validate double-entry ledger integrity, OVA (Open Value Account) balance consistency, and fund movement operations (Top-up, Payment, Funds In/Out). - Perform security-focused testing on payment token flows, JWT-based Partner API authentication (HS256 / ES256), and PCI-relevant data handling. - Collaborate with the HSM and cryptographic infrastructure teams to define and validate key injection, PIN encryption (scenarios A-D), and card personalization test cases. - Serve as the QA point of contact for production incidents - reproduce reported issues in staging, confirm root cause, and verify fixes before re-deployment. - Maintain a structured hotfix verification workflow: fast-track regression scope, execute targeted smoke and regression suites, and provide go/no-go sign-off under time pressure. - Analyse production logs, monitoring dashboards (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK), and transaction traces to identify quality signals and prevent recurrence. - Maintain a living production issue register to track defect patterns, recurrence rate, and long-term remediation actions. - Partner with product managers to translate feature requirements and acceptance criteria into testable specifications before development begins - enforcing a shift-left quality model. - Work directly with backend and frontend engineers during development cycles: review design documents for testability, participate in code reviews, and provide early QA feedback on pull requests. - Facilitate structured QA handoff processes: definition of done checklists, pre-release sign-off gates, and cross-team readiness reviews before each deployment. - Maintain open communication channels with development and product teams on active defects, test progress, and release readiness - ensuring no quality risks are surfaced late. - Own the overall QA strategy for VeryPay's platform - define standards, tooling decisions, and quality processes across the engineering team. - Lead, mentor, and grow a QA team (currently junior/mid engineers); conduct structured 1:1s, performance feedback, and skills development planning. - Drive test architecture decisions: framework selection, test pyramid balance, toolchain standardization, and technical debt management within the QA layer. - Act as the QA representative in sprint planning, architecture reviews, and cross-team technical discussions - advocating for quality requirements from inception. - Build a quality culture across the broader engineering team, not just within QA - through pairing, documentation, and shift-left practices. - Implement and maintain quality gates in CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or equivalent) including automated regression on every merge to main. - Define and track QA KPIs: defect escape rate, test coverage, automation ratio, mean time to detect (MTTD) - report to engineering leadership with actionable insights. - Own incident post-mortems from the quality perspective: root cause analysis, regression gap identification, and process improvement actions. - Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, backend engineers, DevOps, and integration partners to embed quality requirements early in the development lifecycle. Benefits - Work on a technically challenging, real-world fintech platform used for social cash transfers, cashless schools, and enterprise retail payments across Africa. - A team that treats quality engineering as first-class — with investment in tooling, process, and automation. - Active investment in AI-augmented development workflows with a pragmatic, safety-first philosophy. - Competitive compensation commensurate with experience and location. - Flexible remote-first work environment with a collaborative, async-friendly engineering culture. How to Apply Send your CV and a brief cover note. In your cover note, please address: (1) a testing challenge you solved in a payment or financial system, and (2) how you have used or would use AI tools to improve test coverage or efficiency.