Contractor: Senior Quality Engineer - Newsela

The Role

Newsela is on a mission to deliver "meaningful classroom learning for every student." As a Senior Quality Engineer, you will be a critical force in ensuring that mission is delivered through reliable, high-quality software. You will work alongside talented product engineers to test complex front-end applications powered by cloud-based back-end services, internal LLMs, and third-party AI tools.

Why You'll Love This Role

• Drive High Impact: Own quality end-to-end within your scrum team and directly support a mission that transforms classroom learning for millions of students.
• Modern AI Workflows: Leverage cutting-edge AI tools (like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot) to accelerate test development while testing complex, non-deterministic AI features and LLMs.
• Technical Ownership: Build and architect full-stack test frameworks across UI, API, and service layers with autonomy and high visibility.
• Collaborative Leadership: Partner closely with cross-functional peers in Product, Design, and Engineering while mentoring mid-level engineers to elevate the overall quality culture.

What You'll Be Doing

• Deliver high-quality test coverage on time, leveraging AI tools to accelerate automation development without sacrificing reliability or craft.
• Build and maintain automated test frameworks and regression suites across UI, API, and service layers, incorporating AI-assisted development practices as part of a standard workflow.
• Own test planning and execution end-to-end within your scrum team — from story validation through production release support — with minimal oversight.
• Test and validate internally-built LLMs and external AI tools and services, applying sound quality engineering judgment to non-deterministic systems.
• Partner closely with Engineering, Product Management, and Product Design to identify quality risks early and refine ambiguous requirements into clearly defined, testable acceptance criteria.
• Serve as the quality advocate within your scrum team, providing technical guidance that elevates the team's approach to testing throughout all phases of development.
• Own test status communication to all stakeholders — surfacing coverage gaps, release risk, and defect trends with clarity and appropriate urgency.
• Establish and follow best practices for defect documentation, triage, and tracking — and use AI tooling to assist with issue detection, reproduction, and resolution.
• Mentor and grow mid-level quality engineers through code reviews, pairing sessions, and hands-on guidance.

About You

• 5+ Years Experience: Professional software testing and QA experience within an Agile Scrum environment.
• Automation Expertise: 5+ years building test frameworks with TypeScript, JavaScript, or Python, including hands-on experience with WebdriverIO or Playwright.
• Full-Spectrum Testing: Demonstrated capability across manual, exploratory, regression, integration, API/services, and database testing.
• CI/CD & DevOps: Solid understanding of Git branching strategies, PR workflows, and incremental CI/CD deployment pipelines.
• AI Tooling Integration: Hands-on experience using AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) as part of your daily workflow, paired with strong critical thinking and quality ownership.
• Proactive Communication: Ability to engage actively in all scrum ceremonies, surface release risks and defect trends to stakeholders, and handle production escalation support.

Required Industry & Technical Background

• Industry Experience: EdTech, SaaS/B2B software, or e-learning/online education platforms.
• Automation & Test Runners: Playwright, WebdriverIO, or Selenium (E2E browser automation); Jest, Vitest, or Mocha (unit/integration runners).
• Performance & Infrastructure: Experience with k6, JMeter, or Locust; test execution via GitHub Actions and AWS.
• Observability & Management: Experience with logs/error tracking in Datadog, Sentry, or New Relic; test management using TestRail, Jira, Xray, or Zephyr.

About Newsela

Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.