Senior QA Engineer (m/f/d) - Quality Strategy & Automation

Become Senior QA Engineer (m/f/d) - Quality Strategy & Automation at Retarus.

Retarus is a worldwide provider of cloud-based messaging solutions at enterprise scale. We serve over 40% of the companies listed on the S&P Global 100, e.g. Adidas, Bayer, SAP, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, T-Systems, Swarovski & UPS, as well as governmental agencies and major players in markets across the world. Privately owned and founder-managed for over thirty years, Retarus is customer-oriented, stable, a fair employer, and a strategic business partner with a long-term vision.

With some 500 employees in 19 offices on four continents, Retarus operates locally and thinks globally: our teams are organized across borders and are highly integrated. This makes Retarus a multicultural, multilingual, and engaging workplace. We are committed to creating a diverse and dynamic environment for our employees, with generous compensation, time off, and a global, collaborative workplace.

What we offer

• Mobile working and flexible working time
• Collaborative, diverse company culture and superior team spirit
• Flat hierarchies and great feedback culture
• Development opportunities & career perspective
• International business & cross-site collaboration
• Modern, dog-friendly offices with nice amenities
• Company-paid health insurance, public transportation, lunch vouchers and further benefits

What you'll do

Quality Strategy & Shift-Left Integration

Own the Business Logic

• Partner with product owners, functional analysts, QA peers, and developers
• to dissect workflows, identify edge cases, and challenge assumptions
• before a single line of code is written.

Architect the QA Plan

• Assess existing coverage and constraints to establish a risk-based
• strategy encompassing exploratory, integration, and E2E testing.
• Mentor & Elevate the QA
• Team: Act as the technical anchor for fellow QA engineers. Guide their
• daily testing efforts, ensure strict alignment with the overarching QA
• strategy, and continuously upskill the team on modern automation
• practices.
• Make Quality Visible: Build
• coverage matrices and dashboards that clearly communicate release
• confidence, testing gaps, and risks to both technical and business
• stakeholders.

Hands-On Automation & Engineering

Bridge Cross-Functional

• Environments: Partner directly with DevOps and Backend QA teams to
• eliminate environment discrepancies, resolve complex cross-domain test
• data constraints, and ensure unbroken end-to-end test coverage across the
• full product stack.

Build Resilient Automation

• Develop and maintain reliable E2E tests using Playwright
• (TypeScript/JavaScript), alongside targeted API and integration suites.
• Focus strictly on high-value, repeatable scenarios.

Co-drive Testability &

• Best Practices: Modify application components directly to ensure reliable
• test targeting (e.g., injecting data-testid attributes), and lead
• technical discussions with the team on how to maximize Playwright’s API
• capabilities.

Navigate Enterprise

Reality: Design effective testing approaches when test data is scarce,

shared, or inconsistent using synthetic data, mocks, and stubs.

CI/CD & Pipeline

• Health: Collaborate with the Tech Lead to integrate test execution into
• CI/CD pipelines, aggressively investigate failures, and eradicate flaky
• tests.
• Continuous Improvement via Telemetry & AI

Leverage Production Data

• Use production telemetry (Sentry), reported incidents, and security
• findings to continuously patch regression gaps and adapt the testing
• strategy.

Multiply Impact with AI

Utilize JetBrains AI to accelerate test code development, analyze

specifications, and identify missing test scenarios.

What you'll need

• A university degree in
• Computer Engineering/Science or equivalent education, career changers with
• passion for IT are also welcome.
• 6+ years of professional
• experience in a comparable position.

Engineering Foundation

Proven hands-on experience developing automated test suites with

Playwright (TypeScript/JavaScript) and testing complex APIs.

Strategic Mindset

• Experience transitioning a team from ad-hoc testing to a structured QA
• strategy with clear priorities and acceptance criteria.
• Domain Agility: Strong
• curiosity and a demonstrated ability to rapidly translate complex business
• rules into structured test scenarios.

Pragmatic Problem Solving

• High resourcefulness in restricted environments or when dealing with
• legacy test data limitations.
• Modern Tooling: Working
• knowledge of Git, PR workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and practical experience
• using AI tools to optimize daily workflows.
• Communication: The ability
• to distill complex technical risks and coverage gaps into clear insights
• for diverse audiences.

Success

in Your First 6 Months Looks Like:

We

• give you the space to succeed. You will be shielded from standard sprint
• deliverables so you can shadow the scrum team, absorb our business rules, and
• build relationships.

This

period is your runway to demonstrate a proactive attitude, great analytical

skills, and tangible progress in shaping our QA roadmap.

And as soon as possible

• A validated understanding
• of our critical business workflows and their associated risks.
• A highly visible baseline
• of our existing test coverage, gaps, and data constraints.
• An agreed-upon QA strategy
• with clear priorities actively being implemented.
• Reliable automated tests
• guarding our most critical production scenarios.
• Demonstrable improvements
• to test reliability and test data handling.

What you can expect

At Retarus, you will work on impactful and dynamic projects, with real opportunities to make a difference. Our customers are leaders across diverse industries, with constantly evolving needs and high expectations. You’ll be working with cutting-edge technology and great creative leeway to meet customers’ needs – and the projects you work on will be deployed globally. Working at Retarus, you will collaborate closely with convivial, culturally diverse teammates. You will grow professionally in a dynamic and exciting workplace and design impactful solutions in real time with top companies.

Very important

Come as you are. Retarus is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or veteran status.

Apply via our online application portal – it’s easy and doesn’t take long. Our colleague Alissa Selman is happy to field any questions you may have: [email protected]

We’re

looking forward to getting to know you!