QA Lead (Manual & Automation, Platform)

StellarTech is a fast-growing, multi-product EdTech company with a team of 200+ professionals. We create and scale digital products for global markets, combining creativity, technology, and performance marketing. We are looking for a QA Lead to own and continuously improve the QA function of our Platform team, uniting Manual and Automation QA into one strong, predictable quality practice. This role goes beyond managing test execution or reporting bugs. We are looking for someone who understands how quality works end to end, from requirements to production, can investigate complex technical issues hands-on, and can build a team and processes that scale with frequent releases. The QA Lead will be one of the key people behind the reliability of our core products: web funnels, paywalls, payments and subscriptions, and integrations. You will shape the test strategy, drive automation, own release readiness, and grow a team of 5 QA engineers. This is a full-time remote position with European working hours, ideal for a hands-on QA leader who enjoys building processes, growing people, and taking ownership of product quality. What You Will Do Team Leadership & Development Lead the Manual and Automation QA teams (5 direct reports): distribute workload, set priorities, and ensure predictable delivery. Develop engineers through mentoring, feedback, performance reviews, onboarding, and hiring. QA Strategy & Processes Own the QA strategy, processes, and testing standards. Continuously improve them to raise product quality and team efficiency. Test Planning & Coordination Plan and coordinate regression, smoke, functional, integration, and automated testing across frequent releases. Automation Strategy Drive the automation strategy together with AQA engineers: prioritize coverage of critical business flows and reduce repetitive manual testing. Early QA Involvement Ensure QA takes part early in requirements analysis, technical refinements, risk identification, and test planning. Release Readiness & Risk Management Own release readiness: identify quality risks early and communicate them clearly to stakeholders before deployment. Quality Metrics Track and improve QA efficiency, test coverage, and defect trends, and use the data to make decisions. AI-Assisted QA Introduce AI-assisted QA practices where they deliver measurable impact without compromising quality. What We Are Looking For (must-have): QA Leadership Experience: 6+ years of experience as a QA Lead with direct reports in both manual and automation testing: workload distribution, mentoring, feedback, and performance reviews. Your background is in product IT companies. Test Strategy & Release Readiness: You have owned a test strategy end to end: quality gates, regression approach, manual vs. automated balance, and release go/no-go decisions. You apply risk-based testing and work with quality metrics such as production defects, defect leakage, automation coverage, and regression efficiency. Strong Hands-On Technical Depth: You test frontend, backend, APIs, integrations, and E2E flows yourself, and investigate complex issues independently using Chrome DevTools, network analysis, logs, HAR files, and monitoring. You are confident with Postman and Swagger/OpenAPI: authentication, webhooks, retries, error handling, and data consistency. Payments & Subscriptions: You have tested payment and subscription flows: Chargebee, Adapty, Payrails, Apple Pay / Google Pay, taxes, local currencies, and pricing. Automation Architecture Understanding: You understand test automation architecture, CI/CD, flaky tests, and maintenance cost, and have practical familiarity with Playwright/TypeScript or a similar framework. Practical Use of AI: You use AI tools (Claude, Cursor, or similar) in test design, requirements analysis, and documentation, and critically evaluate their output. Communication & Stakeholder Management: You explain quality risks clearly to engineering, product, and leadership, push back when needed, and build quality as a shared engineering responsibility. Nice-to-Have: Hands-on development and maintenance of Playwright/TypeScript automated tests. Experience with funnel platforms, A/B testing, traffic allocation, and experiment analytics. CRM and marketing integrations (Reteno or similar). Testing AI features and non-deterministic systems. Experience introducing AI-assisted QA and measuring its effectiveness. Managing a QA function in a fast-growing product company, ideally B2C mobile subscription or EdTech. Analytics validation, complex UI flows, responsive design, and cross-browser testing; experience with TestRail, Jira, and Confluence. Why You'll Love Working With Us: Real impact: You will own quality for the platform behind our web funnels, paywalls, and payments. Your work will directly affect revenue and release speed, and you will see firsthand how quality and delivery improve thanks to your efforts. Flexibility: 100% remote work. Our team is globally distributed across Europe and beyond. Health: company-provided medical expense compensation. AI solutions: AI subscription and other tools. Balance: Flexible paid time off, you get 21 days of annual leave + 10 bank holidays. Collaborative Culture: Work alongside passionate professionals who are as driven as you are. How to Apply Please send your CV or LinkedIn profile. A short note about a QA process or team you have built and the results it delivered will help us get to know you faster.