QA Test Engineer (6 Month Contract Role)

QA Test Engineer

CompassX is a boutique business and technology consulting firm. We help Fortune 500 and high-growth clients deliver their most strategic initiatives, from enterprise transformations to digital and data-driven projects. With over 15 years of proven results, we've expanded across industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, consumer products, and quick service restaurants. We are honored to be recognized as a three-time winner of Consulting Magazine's Best Boutique Firms to Work For, and previously recognized as a "Best Place to Work" in Southern California and one of INC.'s 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.

We are seeking a QA Test Engineer to support our Quick Service Restaurant industry client practice for a high-impact, 6-month consulting engagement. In this role, you will be embedded directly within the client's ecosystem, driving quality assurance and building automated validation frameworks for cross-service applications. Operating on CST hours in a remote setup, you will not just execute scripts, you will take complete ownership of functional use cases, testing modern architectures built on GraphQL, Playwright, and real-time Pub/Sub (MQTT) systems. This role is ideal for a testing expert who thrives on identifying failures across distributed software components and is eager to pioneer AI-enhanced development tools to accelerate deployment velocity.

What You'll Do:

• Design, draft, and scale robust automated test suites using Node.js and TypeScript to validate feature stability.
• Lead hands-on automation testing across multiple web applications using Playwright, with additional exposure to Android (Appium) ecosystems.
• Write and maintain test coverage for intricate GraphQL queries as well as asynchronous, real-time messaging interfaces like MQTT, WebSockets, or SSE.
• Monitor, scale, and maintain automated test execution across continuous integration environments via GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins.
• Actively leverage container registries, Docker images, and log aggregation platforms to analyze and correlate errors across distributed services.
• Collaborate dynamically across engineering teams to surface, track (via Jira), and proactively resolve environmental and application defects.
• Integrate cutting-edge AI tools within your day-to-day workflow to boost test creation efficiency and delivery cadence.

What You'll Bring:

• 3-5 years of focused experience in software quality engineering, test automation, or SDET positions.
• Core Languages: Solid, hands-on proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript, coupled with experience utilizing test runners such as Mocha.
• Modern Tooling Mastery: Proven experience implementing and building out UI frameworks with Playwright.
• Architecture Literacy: Strong experience validating GraphQL APIs and a functional understanding of messaging layer test strategies (MQTT, WebSockets, or Server-Sent Events).
• DevOps & Cloud Environment Awareness: Working knowledge of containerized deployments using Docker alongside Git-based continuous integration/deployment delivery models.
• Distributed System Debugging: Highly analytical approach to parsing, analyzing, and correlating service and application logs to locate root causes of code defects.
• Consultative Communication: Strong interpersonal skills with the capability to easily translate complex technical bug discoveries into clear, actionable tracking discussions.

$50 - $60 an hour