QA Architect

Job description

**Ready to accelerate your career?** Cardata is where driven people make an outsized impact. We’re a small but mighty team transforming how businesses manage vehicle reimbursement — replacing outdated programs with smart, automated solutions. Our vision is bold: to provide the most comprehensive, intelligent, and automated software and services for creating ideal vehicle programs. And we’re building toward that vision every single day. Join us and you’ll find challenge, growth, and the chance to deliver real impact — helping hundreds of companies and thousands of drivers across North America focus on the work that matters most to them. We're searching for a QA Architect to own quality strategy, automation, and CI enforcement across engineering. This role sets the standard for how we build, test, and ship software, not just execute test cases. You'll lead the design of our test infrastructure, push automation-first practices across Engineering and Product, and make quality gates part of every stage of the SDLC, from planning to production. This role has the authority to block a release over quality concerns. We need someone who can architect quality frameworks, create department-wide quality plans, wire automated tests into CI/CD, and shift the team's default from catching bugs late to preventing them early. **What You'll Do** - Own the end-to-end quality strategy across web, APIs, and data layers, including standards, test coverage expectations, and release criteria - Assess existing products and features, identify quality gaps, and establish prioritized test plans based on risk and business impact - Build and scale automated testing frameworks across unit, integration, end-to-end, and regression testing - Define the tooling, architecture, and shared testing patterns used across engineering squads - Embed automated quality gates into CI/CD pipelines to catch regressions before they reach production - Establish release-readiness standards, testing thresholds, and coverage expectations across teams - Improve test reliability, pipeline health, automation coverage, and flakiness across critical user flows - Partner with DevOps/Platform to ensure test environments are stable, fast, and representative of production - Define and monitor engineering quality metrics that surface trends, risks, and areas for improvement - Partner with Engineering and Product to build testability into requirements, design, and technical planning - Drive shift-left practices so quality is considered earlier in the development lifecycle, not just before release - Mentor engineers and QA team members on automation, testing practices, and quality ownership - Participate in incident reviews and post-mortems and turn recurring quality gaps into systemic improvements - Act as a quality authority on releases, including holding releases when critical standards are not met **What You Bring** - 7–10+ years in software quality, including senior ownership of QA strategy, architecture, or automation - Experience as a QA Architect, Staff/Principal SDET, Principal QA Engineer, or similar - Proven experience building and scaling test automation frameworks - Hands-on experience with tools such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Jest, Postman, or similar - Strong experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD platforms such as GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or Jenkins - Experience with TypeScript/JavaScript testing environments, REST APIs, and relational databases - Strong understanding of modern web application architecture and quality engineering practices - Experience with performance/load testing tools such as **k6, Locust, or JMeter** is a plus - Experience using AI development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, or Copilot to improve testing and automation - Interest in applying AI to areas such as test generation, defect detection, and pipeline optimization **Compensation** In line with Ontario’s Pay Transparency legislation, the salary range for this role is $130,000 – $160,000 CAD annually, based on experience, skills, and alignment with the role requirements. This is a vacant position, and we are hiring with intention and seeking someone who will bring new perspective, contribute meaningfully to the team, and grow with the organization. **Why you’ll love working at Cardata:** We’ll be honest — Cardata isn’t for everyone. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, take extreme ownership, and constantly push yourself (and your work) to be the best, you’ll fit right in. You’ll be surrounded by driven teammates who genuinely care — about the work, about our customers, and about helping each other succeed. Together, we take on ambitious goals and celebrate the wins along the way. What we offer in return for you bringing your best: - Remote work and flexible working hours - Mentorship and development opportunities (to help you achieve your career goals!) - Extended medical & dental benefits - Healthcare spending account - $3,000 annual Health and Wellness Spending Account to support your overall wellbeing - Employee assistance program (EAP) - Flexible (Unlimited) Time Off: No annual cap on vacation, supported by a trust-based, flexible approach to time away. *Cardata is an equal opportunity employer. All candidates will be equally considered without regard to race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, language, citizenship, creed, religion, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, physical and/or mental handicap or financial ability. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome to bring their authentic selves to work.* *If you require accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know.*