QA Automation Engineer – Playwright

Position Overview

We are looking for a detail-oriented QA Automation Engineer with strong hands-on experience in Playwright to design, develop, execute, and maintain automated tests for modern web applications. The ideal candidate combines practical automation engineering skills with a solid understanding of software testing principles, risk-based testing, defect management, and continuous quality improvement.

You will work closely with software developers, product owners, business analysts, and DevOps engineers to validate application behaviour across user journeys, APIs, browsers, and environments. You will help establish reliable automated regression coverage, integrate tests into CI/CD pipelines, and identify quality risks early in the software development lifecycle.

Candidates should be comfortable writing maintainable automation code, investigating failures, communicating defects clearly, and improving test strategy as products evolve.

Key Responsibilities

Test Planning and Quality Assurance

• Analyse business requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and technical designs to identify test scenarios and potential risks.
• Create and maintain test plans, test cases, test data, and traceability between requirements and test coverage.
• Perform functional, regression, smoke, integration, exploratory, and end-to-end testing as appropriate.
• Identify positive, negative, boundary, and edge-case scenarios, including validation of error handling and unusual user behaviour.
• Apply risk-based testing to prioritise coverage for business-critical workflows and high-impact areas.
• Participate in requirement reviews and sprint planning to identify ambiguity, testability concerns, and quality risks early.

Playwright Test Automation

• Design, develop, and maintain reliable automated tests using Playwright.
• Build end-to-end tests for critical application workflows, including authentication, forms, navigation, data entry, search, reporting, and role-based access.
• Use Playwright capabilities such as locators, assertions, fixtures, test hooks, browser contexts, projects, and reusable test utilities.
• Apply the Page Object Model or other suitable abstraction patterns where they improve maintainability.
• Use Playwright's auto-waiting and locator strategies to create robust tests and minimise flaky automation.
• Configure and execute tests across supported browsers, such as Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, according to project requirements.
• Validate responsive behaviour and different viewport sizes where required.
• Capture and analyse screenshots, videos, traces, console logs, and other diagnostic artifacts to investigate failures.
• Maintain test suites as application functionality, UI components, and requirements change.
• Review automation code for readability, reusability, reliability, and appropriate assertions.

Programming and Automation Framework Design

• Write clean, modular, and maintainable test automation code using TypeScript or JavaScript.
• Develop reusable fixtures, helper functions, test data builders, custom assertions, and common utilities.
• Structure test suites to support reliable local execution and scalable CI execution.
• Manage environment configuration and test data without hardcoding secrets or environment-specific values.
• Use appropriate tagging, grouping, retries, timeouts, and parallel execution settings based on test-suite needs.
• Keep tests independent where practical and avoid dependencies on test execution order.
• Investigate and reduce flaky tests rather than relying solely on retries to hide instability.
• Contribute to coding standards and documentation for the automation framework.

API and Integration Testing

• Develop automated API tests using Playwright's API testing capabilities or other suitable tools.
• Validate HTTP methods, status codes, response payloads, headers, schemas, authentication, and error responses.
• Test API behaviour for valid, invalid, missing, and boundary input values.
• Verify integration between frontend applications, backend services, and external systems.
• Validate that UI actions result in the expected backend state where appropriate.
• Understand RESTful API principles and common integration failure modes.
• Use tools such as Postman or similar API clients for exploratory testing and troubleshooting where useful.

CI/CD and Test Execution

• Integrate Playwright test suites into CI/CD pipelines to support automated validation of pull requests, builds, and releases.
• Work with pipeline tools such as GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or equivalent platforms.
• Configure test execution across development, test, staging, and other relevant environments.
• Publish test reports and preserve diagnostic artifacts for failed runs.
• Help define appropriate test gates and quality criteria for deployments.
• Optimise execution time through suitable test selection, parallelisation, and reliable test data setup.
• Collaborate with DevOps and development teams to troubleshoot environment-related test failures.

Defect Management and Root-Cause Analysis

• Identify, document, prioritise, and track defects using tools such as Jira or equivalent issue trackers.
• Create clear defect reports with reproducible steps, expected and actual results, environment details, evidence, and impact.
• Distinguish product defects from automation issues, test-data problems, environment failures, and timing-related instability.
• Reproduce failures, analyse logs and traces, and collaborate with developers to determine root causes.
• Retest fixes and perform targeted regression testing before closure.
• Track recurring defects and recommend preventive improvements to reduce rework.

Reporting and Continuous Improvement

• Communicate test progress, execution results, coverage gaps, risks, and release readiness to relevant stakeholders.
• Maintain automation documentation, test reports, setup instructions, and troubleshooting guides.
• Identify opportunities to improve test coverage, framework maintainability, execution speed, and defect detection.
• Contribute to quality metrics such as pass/fail trends, defect leakage, flaky-test rates, execution duration, and coverage of critical journeys.
• Promote a quality-first culture and shift testing activities earlier in the development lifecycle.

Collaboration

• Work closely with developers, product owners, business analysts, designers, and DevOps engineers in an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Participate in daily stand-ups, sprint planning, refinement, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Provide timely feedback on acceptance criteria, usability concerns, testability, and release risks.
• Explain technical testing issues clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Take ownership of assigned testing activities and proactively communicate blockers.

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Professional experience in software quality assurance, with hands-on experience in test automation.
• Strong practical knowledge of Playwright for browser-based end-to-end testing.
• Proficiency in TypeScript or JavaScript and the ability to write maintainable automation code.
• Understanding of software testing principles, test design techniques, defect lifecycle, and test documentation.
• Experience testing modern web applications and validating complete user journeys.
• Good understanding of HTML, CSS, browser behaviour, DOM structure, and browser developer tools.
• Experience with locators, assertions, fixtures, hooks, browser contexts, and test configuration in Playwright.
• Familiarity with API testing, REST concepts, HTTP methods, status codes, and JSON payloads.
• Experience with Git, branching, pull requests, and collaborative development workflows.
• Understanding of CI/CD concepts and automated test execution in build pipelines.
• Ability to analyse failures, troubleshoot test instability, and distinguish product issues from test or environment issues.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience testing applications across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
• Experience with API automation using Playwright APIRequestContext, Postman, or similar tools.
• Familiarity with SQL or NoSQL databases for test data setup and backend validation.
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or GitLab CI.
• Familiarity with Docker and containerised test execution.
• Experience with Jira, Azure Boards, TestRail, or other test and defect management tools.
• Knowledge of accessibility testing, responsive testing, and cross-browser compatibility.
• Familiarity with performance testing concepts and tools such as k6 or JMeter.
• Experience testing applications with role-based permissions, multi-tenant workflows, or complex integrations.
• Exposure to visual regression testing and tools such as Playwright screenshot comparisons.
• Familiarity with reporting tools such as Playwright HTML reports, Allure, or equivalent.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum teams and supporting frequent release cycles.

Playwright Skills Expected

Candidates should be able to demonstrate practical knowledge of the following, based on the role's seniority and project needs:

• Locators and assertions: Selecting elements reliably and validating user-visible behaviour.
• Fixtures and hooks: Reusing setup and teardown logic without creating hidden test dependencies.
• Browser contexts: Isolating sessions, cookies, storage, and user roles.
• Test data management: Creating, reusing, and cleaning up test data safely.
• Authentication: Reusing authenticated state securely where appropriate and testing access-control behaviour.
• API testing: Preparing data through APIs and validating service responses.
• Parallel execution: Running independent tests concurrently without data collisions.
• Debugging: Using Playwright Inspector, traces, screenshots, videos, and logs to investigate failures.
• Cross-browser testing: Selecting browser projects and analysing browser-specific differences.
• CI integration: Running tests in pipelines and publishing useful reports and artifacts.
• Flaky-test prevention: Using resilient locators, deterministic test data, appropriate waiting strategies, and isolated tests.

Testing Types and Coverage

The role may involve a combination of the following, depending on product and project needs:

• Functional and end-to-end testing
• Smoke and regression testing
• API and integration testing
• Cross-browser and responsive testing
• Negative, boundary, and validation testing
• Authentication and authorisation testing
• Data validation and database verification
• Accessibility checks
• Visual regression checks
• Exploratory and risk-based testing

Tools and Technology Stack

Area	Technologies / Concepts
Automation	Playwright
Languages	TypeScript, JavaScript
Web Fundamentals	HTML, CSS, DOM, browser developer tools
API Testing	Playwright API testing, Postman, REST, JSON
Version Control	Git
CI/CD	GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or equivalent
Test Reporting	Playwright HTML Report, Allure, or equivalent
Test Management	Jira, Azure Boards, TestRail, or equivalent
Databases	SQL and/or NoSQL — preferred
Containers	Docker — preferred
Additional Quality Tools	Accessibility, visual regression, and performance testing tools — preferred

Professional Competencies

• Strong attention to detail and commitment to product quality.
• Structured thinking and the ability to identify risks beyond the stated happy path.
• Clear written communication and the ability to create actionable defect reports.
• Confidence collaborating with developers and challenging unclear requirements constructively.
• Ability to manage priorities and work effectively within sprint timelines.
• Ownership of test coverage, automation reliability, and timely escalation of risks.
• Continuous learning and willingness to improve automation practices.

What Success Looks Like

• Stable, maintainable Playwright tests covering critical business workflows.
• Early identification and clear communication of defects and quality risks.
• Reliable automated test execution within CI/CD pipelines.
• Reduced flaky-test rates and faster failure investigation.
• Meaningful regression coverage across relevant browsers and environments.
• Clear test reports that help teams make informed release decisions.
• Effective collaboration that improves quality throughout the development lifecycle.

Experience Level

QA Automation Engineer – Playwright

2–5 years of professional QA experience, including hands-on test automation. Candidates must demonstrate hands-on Playwright automation skills and the ability to apply testing fundamentals in a production software delivery environment.

Application Notes

Applicants should be prepared to discuss their Playwright framework experience, test design approach, API testing knowledge, CI/CD integration experience, and methods for diagnosing flaky tests. Practical examples of automation code or framework design may be requested during the interview process.