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Zinc is seeking a Quality Lead to establish and lead a new Quality Engineering function. This is the first hire into the quality team, offering the opportunity to define quality practices and culture from the ground up.
The role centers on a Quality Assistance model where engineers own the quality of their own work, supported by a dedicated quality function. In the early months, you will assess the codebase and engineering processes to identify quality gaps, build regression test coverage to catch failures before customers encounter them, and coach engineers to test their own work effectively. As the function matures, you will hire and grow a small team of 2–4 people.
Key responsibilities include:
- Identifying quality breakdowns across the product and engineering process, focusing on areas of highest risk
- Designing and maintaining regression test plans that enable the team to ship with confidence
- Training and mentoring engineers to embed good testing practices within pull requests
- Developing tools and approaches for complex testing scenarios beyond standard patterns
- Building reliable test environments using third-party mocking and simulation tools
- Introducing and embedding quality best practices throughout the software development lifecycle
- Defining and reporting quality metrics that reflect true product health
- Building and growing the quality team
Requirements:
- Experience embedding quality practices within engineering teams where engineers own testing and you elevate their capabilities
- Demonstrated ability to design testing strategy and regression plans from scratch for products already in customer hands
- Proficiency with third-party tools for building mocks and dependable test scenarios across complex systems
- Background working in compliance-driven organizations with understanding of how compliance is maintained over time
- Ability to define and report quality metrics that give leadership genuine visibility into product health
- Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript (required for writing and maintaining automated tests)
- Experience with Cypress (already in use at Zinc) and familiarity with equivalent JS-based E2E frameworks like Playwright
- Experience with Jest (back-end testing) and Vitest (front-end component testing)
- Comfort with CircleCI and CI/CD pipelines
- Natural teaching ability with patience and genuine satisfaction in raising engineer skill levels
- Highly collaborative approach, working closely with engineering, product, and design teams
- Process-minded with ability to identify and implement improvements across the SDLC
- Kind, supportive demeanor with ability to build positive, respectful team culture
