Lead QA Automation Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

MOTER Technologies, Inc. (“MOTER”) is unlocking the world of connected vehicle data to power innovative products and services for the automotive, mobility, and insurance industries. Our edge-computing-based advanced data analytics and software platform transforms vehicle data into actionable insights that drive the next generation of driver scoring, risk analytics, and insurance solutions.

MOTER is modernizing the insurance industry by equipping insurers with real-time vehicle insights to enhance underwriting, streamline claims, and improve risk assessment. To drive this transformation, MOTER is building white-labeled insurance products for some of the most recognized brands in the automotive industry. These offerings leverage the full suite of MOTER’s connected vehicle data solutions—including next-generation telematics and claims visualization tools—bridging the gap between automakers and insurers, accelerating innovation, and delivering measurable value across the mobility ecosystem.

Job Overview

MOTER is hiring a Lead QA Automation Engineer to own the quality bar across our connected vehicle data platform and the products built on top of it. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced test engineer who combines automation architecture, AI-first toolchain design, and execution.

This role will design and build MOTER’s automation testing toolchain across web, mobile, and API services; codify the testing patterns that enable humans and AI coding agents to generate reliable tests at high velocity; and partner closely with engineering, product, and platform teammates to deliver trustworthy software. The role will also mentor and coach QA engineers, establish QA infrastructure and best practices, and help the team move faster without sacrificing quality. The Lead QA Automation Engineer reports to the Director of Engineering.

Essential Functions

Quality Strategy & Technical Leadership

• Own MOTER’s end-to-end quality strategy across web, mobile, and backend services, including test plans, coverage targets, environments, and exit criteria.
• Lead technical design discussions and RFCs on testability, automation architecture, and release strategy, making pragmatic trade-offs between speed, maintainability, and long-term product quality.
• Guide framework and tooling decisions across the test automation stack, including upgrades, shared test libraries, runtime performance, and engineering experience for all contributors who write tests.
• Set a high bar for test code quality, documentation, code review of test code, and definition of done across the engineering team.
• Contribute meaningfully to the automation codebase as a hands-on technical leader.

AI-First Automation Toolchain

• Design and build MOTER’s AI-first automation toolchain — pipelines, prompts, MCP servers, custom subagents, and harnesses that enable Claude Code, Codex, and other AI coding agents to generate, refactor, and maintain tests reliably.
• Treat test code as a product: architect frameworks, page objects, fixtures, mocks, and data factories so an AI agent can read the system under test and produce a draft a human only needs to review — not rewrite.
• Evaluate, choose, and integrate AI-assisted QA tooling including model-based test generation, self-healing selectors, AI-driven visual diff, and intelligent flake detection.
• Define guardrails for AI-generated test code: review processes, quality gates, security boundaries, and metrics that confirm AI-generated tests are improving — not degrading — overall quality.

Web & Mobile Test Automation

• Design, build, and maintain MOTER’s web UI automation suite using Playwright, Cypress, and/or Selenium, with a clear perspective on which tool is most effective in a given context.
• Own mobile test automation on Android using Appium and Espresso, including device strategy across real devices and cloud farms such as BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, or Firebase Test Lab.
• Build and harden API and contract tests (REST and GraphQL) for our backend and establish consistent standards for visual quality and release confidence.

QA Infrastructure, Performance & Observability

• Build the QA infrastructure other engineers depend on: test frameworks, fixtures, environment management, test data factories, reporting, and dashboards.
• Lead performance and load testing efforts using k6, JMeter, or Locust, and define performance budgets and regression gates the team can reliably maintain.
• Improve test observability by partnering with backend and platform engineers on logging, error tracking, tracing, and quality analytics that surface real signal — escape rates, flake rates, coverage, MTTR.
• Aggressively reduce flakiness — instrument, measure, and fix the long tail of unreliable tests so that a red build always indicates a real problem.

Platform & Release Partnership

• Partner with backend and platform teams on contract testing, endpoint design, authentication flows, and developer ergonomics to ensure testability is built into APIs from day one.
• Work effectively with AWS-hosted and serverless environments with a solid understanding of operational, security, and cost trade-offs for ephemeral test infrastructure.
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar) with fast feedback, parallelization, sharding, intelligent retries, artifact management, and clear failure triage.
• Contribute to infrastructure and deployment discussions where quality requirements are relevant, without needing to be the sole owner of the cloud platform.

AI-Assisted Engineering

• Use AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Codex) effectively in day-to-day test authoring and help the team adopt practical patterns that improve velocity and reliability.
• Contribute to team conventions for safe AI-assisted test development, including review expectations, evaluation standards, and appropriate guardrails for AI-generated test code.
• Identify opportunities where AI can improve test coverage velocity, debug workflows, and increase engineering leverage without unnecessary process overhead.

Mentoring & Coaching QA Engineers

• Lead, mentor, and coach QA engineers through technical guidance, code reviews on test code, design reviews, and day-to-day collaboration.
• Help engineers develop sharper judgment around test scope, automation strategy, and when to leverage AI tools versus when to intervene manually.
• Unblock team progress through pairing, debugging, cross-functional collaboration, and clear technical communication.
• Partner with engineering leadership and recruiting on interview design, candidate evaluation, and scaling the QA function thoughtfully.

Perform other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software quality and test automation experience, with at least 2-3 years in a Lead or Staff-level role.
• Deep expertise in web UI automation with Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium — able to architect a suite from scratch and familiar with the failure modes of each framework.
• Strong mobile automation background with Appium and either XCUITest (iOS) or Espresso (Android); experience with both is a plus.
• Hands-on daily use of AI coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar) with a well-formed perspective on where they excel, where they fail, and how to make them reliable for production work.
• Solid programming skills in at least one of TypeScript, JavaScript, or Python, with the ability to read the language of the platform under test (Swift/Kotlin/Java).
• Demonstrated track record of building QA infrastructure — frameworks, harnesses, internal tools — that other engineers adopt and use.
• Demonstrated experience improving product quality through automation architecture, code review of test code, and engineering standards.
• Experience building or evolving shared test libraries, page-object frameworks, or other reusable QA tooling in production.
• Solid understanding of test and product observability, including error tracking, flake analytics, logging, and production debugging workflows.
• Ability to work effectively across the frontend, backend, and mobile boundary, including API design, integration patterns, and authentication flows.
• Hands-on experience designing CI/CD pipelines for test execution — parallelization, sharding, artifact management, retry policy, and reporting.
• Familiarity with infrastructure as code (Terraform or similar) for managing ephemeral test environments and reviewing infrastructure changes safely.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and coaching QA or SDET engineers and establishing testing best practices that take a hold beyond initial rollout.
• Strong fundamentals in API testing (REST and/or GraphQL), async systems, and debugging across the stack.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• High work ethic, self-motivation, and initiative.
• Sound judgment, high integrity, and the ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a larger team.
• Legal authorization to work in the U.S. without sponsorship.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building agentic or AI-assisted developer tooling — MCP servers, custom Claude Code subagents, prompt libraries, evals, or AI-driven code review systems.
• Experience testing AI powered products — non-deterministic outputs, evaluation harnesses, golden datasets, and model regression.
• Experience with device farms (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, Firebase Test Lab) and observability tooling (Datadog, Sentry, OpenTelemetry).
• Background in accessibility (WCAG, axe) and security testing (OWASP, ZAP).
• Experience in insurtech, mobility, automotive, telematics, or other data-rich domains.

Office Location

• Torrance, CA (Tuesdays and Thursdays in office)

Compensation

• The annual base salary range for this position is $125,000 – $150,000. Actual compensation will be determined based on the candidate's experience, skills, and qualifications.
• This is an exempt position.

Degree of Travel:

• 10%

Benefits of Working with Us

• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage; basic life and long-term disability insurance; Health Savings Account (HSA); Flexible Spending Account (FSA); generous paid time off and holiday pay; and a 401(k) with company match.
• Complimentary catered office lunches.
• Flexible office hours to support work-life balance.
• A collaborative culture where your input directly impacts the product and company trajectory.
• A health and wellness-focused work environment with team social events.
• Business casual dress code.

EEO Statement

MOTER Technologies Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability status.

If you require accommodation or assistance with your application, please contact our Human Resources department at View phone number on ziprecruiter.com.