QE Lead Architect - Playwright

The Company

The Kantata Cloud for Professional ServicesTM gives businesses the clarity, control, and confidence they need to optimize resource planning and elevate operational performance. Our purpose-built software is helping over 2,500 professional services organizations in more than 100 countries focus on and optimize their most important asset: their people. By leveraging Kantata, professionals gain access to the information and tools they need to win more business, ensure the right people are always available at the right time, and delight clients with exceptional project delivery and outcomes.

Kantata is well-capitalized, hiring, and growing our loyal and diversified customer base faster than we ever have. Most importantly, we have a clear vision of where we're going and how to get there. (Hint: It involves you.) Did we mention that Kantata is also an awesome place to work? You'll have the opportunity to work in a dynamic environment with a team that loves what they do. A talented team, great perks, and an amazing culture = an employee-rated Best Place to Work!

Role Summary

We're hiring a senior technical collaborator to lead and evolve our Playwright automation platform and the supporting Mavenlink QE API used for reliable test setup and system state management. This is a true platform engineering role: you'll build and maintain TypeScript libraries, frameworks, tooling, and CI execution systems that enable multiple teams/QEs to ship stable, fast, high-signal automation at scale.

The right candidate is strong in TypeScript beyond test-writing and can either already contribute to Ruby on Rails or is motivated and capable to learn quickly to help evolve our Rails-based Mavenlink QE API.

What You'll Own

- Playwright platform architecture (TypeScript) used across suites/teams - Framework-level patterns: fixtures, tagging strategy, parallelization rules, test data/state management, reliability guardrails - CI execution strategy and performance (speed + determinism + signal quality) - Kantata QE API (Ruby/Rails): endpoints/services that provision test accounts, generate data, and set system state safely for automation - Developer experience: templates, utilities, documentation, PR review standards, and enablement

What Success Looks Like (First 90 Days)

- Establish a clear platform roadmap: stability, runtime, maintainability, and capability gaps - Improve suite signal quality (fewer false reds; clearer failure classification) - Increase effective parallelization and reduce runtime bottlenecks - Identify the highest-value QE API improvements and ship at least 1–2 meaningful Rails enhancements (or a concrete plan + first PRs if ramping) - Publish "how we build automation here" standards (fixtures, tagging, retries/quarantine policy, selectors/testability contracts, data/state rules) - Collaborate with our QE team members and Engineering Core team members to ensure strong selectors for easy automation.

Responsibilities

Playwright Platform Engineering (TypeScript)

- Design and implement robust platform primitives (fixtures framework, helpers, client libraries, auth/session handling, stable navigation/state utilities) - Build shared tooling that improves consistency and developer experience (generators, scaffolds, lint rules, test metadata conventions, tagging strategy, run summaries) - Improve execution performance (sharding strategy, parallel safety, worker config, resource usage, caching approaches) - Drive reliability improvements (flake detection, quarantine + remediation workflows, deterministic data/state patterns)

CI / Execution Systems

- Own the platform's CI execution model (GitHub Actions or equivalent): orchestration, reporting, artifacts, re-run strategies, failure triage ergonomics - Implement and maintain dashboards/metrics for platform health: pass rate, runtime, flake rate, failure categories, top offenders, trendlines

Mavenlink QE API (Ruby on Rails)

- Extend and maintain Rails services that support automation state setup (account provisioning, entities creation, configuration toggles, cleanup/reset patterns) - Ensure QE API changes are safe, maintainable, and observable - Partner with core product engineers where necessary to align API capabilities with product behavior and constraints

Technical Leadership (IC)

- In collaboration with other technical leaders, set platform standards through code reviews, reference implementations, concise docs, and enabling patterns - Provide office hours/pairing to accelerate adoption and reduce platform misuse - Own platform backlog and deliver incrementally with high leverage

Required Qualifications

- Senior-level engineering experience building automation frameworks/platforms (not just writing tests) - Expert TypeScript/Node.js skills: designing libraries, modular architecture, maintainable APIs, debugging runtime issues - Deep Playwright experience (preferred) or comparable modern framework plus demonstrated ability to architect platforms and ramp quickly - Strong understanding of: parallel execution, isolation, deterministic test data/state, and flake prevention - CI/CD fluency and comfort debugging pipelines and distributed test runs - Systems thinking: able to trace failures across test code → tooling → services → product behavior

Rails Requirement (Important)

- Either experience shipping production code in Ruby on Rails - Or demonstrated track record learning new stacks quickly + willingness to become effective in Rails early (with support)

Nice to Have

- Experience building internal APIs/services for automation (REST/GraphQL clients, auth flows, data seeding) - Observability for test systems (structured logging, metrics, run reports, triage tooling) - Postgres/SQL comfort; understanding of data modeling and safe data setup/cleanup patterns - Experience working in monorepos, shared packages, versioning/release processes for internal libraries