The Opportunity

We're hiring our first dedicated automation engineer to own end-to-end test automation across our products. Today, our developers write Playwright tests as part of feature work, but we need someone to take real ownership: set the direction for how we do E2E testing, backfill coverage for the critical user journeys we're missing, keep the suite fast and trustworthy, and raise the bar for how the whole engineering team writes tests.

This is a high-autonomy role. You'll define the strategy, not just execute someone else's. You'll pair closely with our DevOps engineer to decide where automated tests live in the pipeline, how often they run, what gates what, and how we scale execution as coverage grows. Over time, you'll take on meaningful ownership of the testing portions of that infrastructure.

You'll succeed here if you treat test code as production code, get genuinely bothered by flaky tests, and enjoy multiplying your impact by making other engineers better.

How You’ll Contribute

Own the E2E test suite: Design, build, and maintain end-to-end automated tests in Playwright (TypeScript) covering our critical user journeys across products.
Backfill and prioritize coverage: Audit what we have, identify the highest-risk gaps, and systematically close them.
Kill flakiness: Root-cause flaky tests, establish quarantine and retry policies, manage test data and environment stability, and keep signal-to-noise high enough that a red build means something.
Shape CI integration: Partner with our DevOps engineer on where tests run in the pipeline, execution frequency, parallelization, runtime budgets, and merge/deploy gating.
Test at the right layer: Know when a check belongs at the API or integration layer instead of the browser, and structure the suite so it stays fast as it grows.
Enable the team: Coach developers on writing good Playwright tests, review test code, and establish patterns, utilities, and documentation so test authorship scales beyond you.
Report on quality: Co-own quality metrics including test coverage of critical paths, suite reliability, and defect escape rate, and communicate trends to engineering leadership.
Use modern tooling: Leverage AI-assisted development (we use Claude Code across engineering) and Playwright's evolving tooling to accelerate test authoring and maintenance.

What Makes a Great Candidate

5+ years in quality engineering, test automation, or software engineering with a strong automation focus
Deep hands-on Playwright expertise, having built and maintained substantial E2E suites
Strong TypeScript/JavaScript proficiency — you write test code you'd be comfortable shipping to production
CI/CD fluency with GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, or similar, including parallelization and selective execution strategies
A track record of fixing flakiness at scale
Independence and ownership — able to turn ambiguous mandates into prioritized plans and drive them to completion
Teaching instincts — mentoring engineers, running code reviews, or raising a team’s testing bar

Nice to Have

API-layer test automation experience (REST, contract testing)
Experience defining quality metrics and reporting to leadership
Familiarity with Ruby on Rails applications (our primary stack)
Experience with test data management, environment provisioning, or Docker-based test infrastructure
Experience using AI-assisted tools (Claude Code, Copilot, Playwright codegen/MCP) in a testing workflow

What Success Looks Like

90 days: Own the existing suite, ship coverage beyond the initial 3–5 journeys, root-cause or quarantine the worst flaky tests, and align a prioritized backfill plan with engineering leadership.
6 months: Critical user journeys have reliable E2E coverage, flakiness is measurably down, and tests are integrated into CI at the right points with clear gating rules.
12 months: Full journey set covered and maintained as products evolve, developers across all teams are writing quality tests to your standards, and suite health and defect escape rate are trusted metrics.

Future Growth Potential

Quality engineering leadership: Define what quality engineering means at Buildout, owning strategy, standards, and metrics.
Test platform and infrastructure ownership: Co-own delivery pipeline, test environments, ephemeral infrastructure, deployment gating, and tooling.
Expanding the testing surface: Lead performance testing, load testing, contract testing, and AI-assisted quality tooling.

Role Details

Location: Fully remote role open across most of the US
Compensation: $130,000–$150,000
Reporting To: Alan Spadoni, SVP of Engineering

Perks & Benefits

Impactful insurance and benefit options, including 2 medical plans, 100% coverage of employee dental and vision premiums, HSA seed, company-paid STD, LTD, life insurance, telemedicine, and a $400/year wellness benefit
Flexible PTO, 14 paid company holidays, paid parental leave, and give back days
401(k) with 4% company match and immediate vesting
Fully remote work culture with $600/year remote work reimbursement and annual in-person company kickoff
Challenging problems to solve with a supportive team invested in your growth
A quirky, inclusive culture where you’re encouraged to bring your whole self to work

Senior QA Automation Engineer