QA Engineer

Job description

Pod Network is building a next-generation decentralized exchange focused on fairness, performance, and user experience. Under the hood, pod is powered by a low-latency distributed system that handles transactions, validator communication, execution, receipts, APIs, and client-facing flows. As we ship new versions of pod, we need someone to test the actual software carefully: run it, use it, break it, compare behavior across versions, verify fixes, and make sure critical flows work before they reach users. ABOUT THE ROLE : We’re looking for a QA Engineer to own manual and automated testing for pod releases. This is primarily a hands-on QA role. You’ll test new features and new versions of pod directly: running local and staging environments, submitting transactions, checking API responses, verifying receipts and state changes, testing CLI and client flows, reproducing bugs, and confirming that fixes work. You’ll work closely with engineers to understand what changed in each release, define the right test cases, and build a practical release checklist. Over time, you’ll also automate the repeated end-to-end checks that should run before every release. WHAT YOU’LL DO : - Manually test new pod features and releases before they ship. This is the core of the role. - Write clear bug reports with reproduction steps, expected behavior, actual behavior, logs, screenshots, or other useful context. - Communicate with the right person on the team to help bugs get fixed, verified, and shipped to production. - Write automated tests for repeated checks, including end-to-end scripts and headless browser tests. QUALIFICATIONS : - Experience in QA, software testing, release testing, or a similar role. - Strong manual testing skills, with the ability to create practical test cases, reproduce bugs, and document issues clearly. - Comfortable testing technical software such as APIs, CLIs, backend services, infrastructure, developer tools, or distributed systems. - Comfortable using command-line tools, reading logs, running scripts, and working in local or staging environments. - Some experience with automated testing, scripting, smoke tests, regression tests, or end-to-end tests. - Strong ownership of release quality: you keep testing until the behavior is actually understood. NICE TO HAVE : - Experience with blockchain systems, exchanges, trading systems, fintech products, databases, or distributed systems. - Experience with Docker, CI, Kubernetes, cloud environments, or API testing tools. - Experience writing scripts or tests in Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, or Bash. - Familiarity with wallets, transactions, RPC APIs, validators, smart contracts, or Ethereum-compatible tooling. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE : - Bugs are caught early, before they reach users or public environments. - New pod releases go to production with few or no unexpected issues. - Clients can trust that pod works correctly in production. - The engineering team has confidence that new features, fixes, and releases have been tested properly before they ship. WHAT WE OFFER : - Competitive compensation plus meaningful token/equity upside. - Real ownership of QA and release quality from day one. - A high-impact role in a small, ambitious engineering team. - The chance to work on technically challenging distributed systems and market infrastructure. - Occasional travel for team offsites and crypto industry events. ABOUT POD NETWORK : Pod Network is an early-stage Web3 startup building a new layer-1 designed to bring the world’s markets on-chain with a Web2-like experience. Our chainless, blockless, leaderless protocol challenges the conventional notion of consensus to deliver fair, MEV-free execution at scale. We’re backed by a16z crypto, 1kx, BBF, and Lemniscap, and we’re looking for exceptional people to help shape the future of decentralized markets.