QA Lead (hybrid, full time)

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands (Hybrid, full time) We are looking for a Quality Assurance (QA) Lead who makes quality visible to everyone who needs it - producers, developers, management and our platform partners. You will lead a highly skilled international  QA team in a partly remote environment. As a lead you stay close enough to the work to make the hard calls yourself, and help shape what testing looks like in an AI-assisted world. About CoolGames At CoolGames, we’re proud to be a leading international HTML5 game studio, working with some of the world’s biggest ‘Big Tech’ game platforms, such as Netflix, Discord, Facebook and Microsoft Play. We also work with famous games IP such as Battleship, Angry Birds and Monopoly. CoolGames is part of Keesing, the world’s largest Braintainment company. Keesing is a financially strong publisher of engaging sudokus, crosswords and many other puzzles & games with a presence in over 20 countries headquartered in The Netherlands. With the CoolGames HQ in Amsterdam, supported by our global remote teams, we offer market-competitive salaries, the chance to contribute to successful casual games that are played by millions and work directly with some of the biggest brands in the world. We believe in creativity, collaboration and delivering world-class gaming experiences, while giving you the choice to either join our Amsterdam studio or become part of our remote teams. If you want to grow your career in a profitable, internationally recognized company, work closely with world-famous partners and be part of a highly professional international team. CoolGames is the right place for you. About the role Our QA team is highly skilled, with real depth in test design, methodology and the theory behind them. We are rethinking how we test now that AI is part of the daily picture, and we want a lead who is curious about that shift. You are the interface between QA and the rest of the company. The person who makes sure quality is understood, not just measured. That means staying hands-on, though not by taking over the routine work. You step in where your experience changes the outcome, a release under pressure, a problem nobody can pin down, an experimental approach worth trying, test cases that need a second pair of eyes. That is where we want you. You will work closely with our QA Lead Specialist, who brings deep expertise in testing practices and techniques. You will each have your own lead role, bringing complementary expertise and perspectives to the team. Line management and reporting are split between you, and you cover each other’s blind spots. That is also what gives the team headroom: you can both stay close to the work instead of disappearing into management, we can scale with what the projects demand, and there is room to grow. Your responsibilities will include: Bridging QA, production, development and management. You turn test results into risk, status and clear go/no-go advice; Being the voice of QA inside and out. Making sure other disciplines understand what we do and why, and holding our standards in front of external partners and platform holders; Line management of the team - 1-on-1s, growth, workload and hiring; Weighing quality risk against business objectives: backing a calculated risk when it is the right trade-off, putting your foot down when it is not; Planning QA capacity across parallel projects and releases, and raising the flag early when quality is at risk; Owning quality reporting: release readiness, coverage, bug trends and what they mean for the roadmap; Challenging the team and finding the opportunities they are too close to the work to see; Helping the team find where AI genuinely accelerates testing, and where it does not, without giving up the fundamentals that make our QA strong. Requirements About you You are comfortable being the person who says out loud where a product actually stands. In the language of whoever is asking: producer, developer, partner or director. You think in trade-offs rather than absolutes, and you hold the line when it matters. You have led people before and you like it, but you would be unhappy in a role that kept you away from the work itself. Excellent written and verbal communication in English. You can turn a messy test result into a clear decision for a non-technical audience; At least 7 years in software testing, including leading or coordinating a QA team (gamedev is a strong plus); Solid grounding in SDLC and STLC, test design techniques and testing types and levels. Experience planning QA across parallel projects and platforms (mobile, desktop, web, social) in an Agile setting; Experience with Jira and TestRail or similar software, including reporting out of them; A pragmatic, evidence-based view on AI in testing. you can tell a real productivity gain from a demo; Will be a strong plus: Certification like ISTQB; Test automation experience - writing, reviewing and debugging end-to-end tests, ideally with Playwright/Cypress/WebdriverIO and JavaScript/TypeScript; Experience with version control and CI integration (Jenkins/GitHub/GitLab); Experience working directly with external partners or platform holders; Experience introducing AI-assisted workflows in a QA team. Benefits What we can offer you (for studio HQ roles): An international team of 50+ professionals from almost 20 different countries; Work closely with some of the biggest (upcoming) game platforms in the world (netflix, facebook, microsoft, samsung, discord and more) on high-quality casual games that are played by millions of gamers; Competitive remuneration, including health care insurance, travel costs compensation, a company pension plan and a sport allowance; Market salary; A flexible remote working environment for parts of the week; A very open, informal and international company culture where everyone can make a difference