Senior QA Engineer, AI & Automation

Adventure is our Culture. Join a team that celebrates a lifestyle as bold as the terrain we love. At Backcountry, we are rooted in adventure, recognition, and wellbeing on and off the mountain. We spotlight employee stories, celebrate milestones, and offer exclusive outdoor perks. Whether you are at HQ, in a retail store, or remote, you will be part of a team that thrives on energy, exploration, and connection. Reports to: Senior Retail Technology Architect Location: Remote (US, Canada, or Costa Rica) What You’ll Do Build AI-Accelerated Test Automation Build and maintain scalable automation suites using Playwright across web, API, and mobile, contributing to broader QA frameworks and release validation standards. Use AI coding assistants and agents (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Playwright’s planner/generator/healer agents) to generate test plans, test cases, page objects, and test data from requirements, Jira stories, and PR diffs. Review, validate, and harden every AI-generated test before it merges — you own the correctness of the suite regardless of what wrote the code. Drive down flaky tests and maintenance cost through resilient locator strategies, AI-assisted self-healing, and automated failure triage. Integrate automated quality gates into GitHub Actions CI/CD so every deploy is validated by the pipeline rather than by manual sign-off. Build and maintain functional, regression, API, and performance/load testing coverage using tools like Postman, JMeter, or k6. Apply Testing Judgment Where It Matters Determine what should be automated, what can be delegated to AI, and what requires human testing — balancing coverage, risk, and release timelines. Perform focused exploratory testing on new features, UI/UX changes, and complex user flows to catch edge cases and usability issues that automation and AI miss. Turn every escaped defect into an automated regression check so the suite strengthens with each release. Partner with engineers to embed tests, API contract checks, and AI-assisted code review early in the SDLC to reduce downstream defect costs. Help define how to test AI-powered customer experiences (search, recommendations) where outputs are non-deterministic and need evaluation rubrics rather than exact assertions. Track and report quality metrics (automation coverage, defect escape rate, flake rate, test cycle time) to show where automation is paying off. Contribute to a High-Performing Team Collaborate with QA peers and engineering teams, sharing knowledge, best practices, and the AI prompts and workflows that work. Provide input on quality practices and process improvements across the engineering org, focusing on reducing manual regression and UAT effort. Support and mentor QA engineers on automation and responsible AI-assisted testing, fostering a culture of quality ownership. Required Qualifications 5+ years of experience in Quality Assurance and Testing, including 3+ years building and maintaining test automation that runs in CI/CD. Proven, hands-on experience with Playwright for web and API E2E automation; Cypress or Selenium experience is a plus. Strong automation fundamentals: ability to design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable test suites and frameworks, and to diagnose and eliminate flaky tests. Strong proficiency in TypeScript/JavaScript or Python (Java a plus); you write test code to the same standard as production code. Hands-on, day-to-day use of AI coding tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Cursor) to write, refactor, and debug test code, with the discipline to validate and correct AI-generated output. Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions preferred), including parallel execution, reporting, and quality gates. Solid experience with functional, regression, API, and performance/load testing (Postman, JMeter, k6, or equivalent). Strong exploratory testing skills and the judgment to build risk-based test strategies across automated, AI-assisted, and manual coverage. Demonstrated SDLC and Agile experience with defect lifecycle management using Jira and TestRail. Ability to operate effectively under a steady release cadence and manage competing priorities with minimal supervision. Preferred Qualifications E-commerce QA automation experience, particularly in environments shipping frequently with CI/CD integration. Experience building or adopting agentic testing workflows (AI test generation, self-healing tests, MCP-connected tools, or LLM-based failure triage). Experience testing AI/ML-powered features such as search, recommendations, or LLM-generated content, including evaluation of non-deterministic output. Familiarity with BrowserStack or similar cloud device and browser grids. Experience with observability tooling like Grafana or GCP-based infrastructure, including using production signals to prioritize test coverage. Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work cross-functionally. Why Join The people who do best here are builders. They take ownership, move fast, and want to see the direct impact of their work. Cross-Functional Impact: Your work touches every engineering team and every release — automation coverage and quality gates you build directly shape what ships to customers across web, mobile, and API. AI-First Skill Building: You will work at the frontier of AI-assisted testing, using and evaluating emerging tools daily and building expertise that is defining the next generation of quality engineering. End-to-End Ownership: You own the automation framework, the CI/CD quality gates, and the testing strategy — from choosing what to automate to deciding how to evaluate non-deterministic AI features. Competitive Benefits (US): Paid time off policies, 401(k) match, medical/dental/vision and a variety of supplemental policies, and employee discounts across our portfolio of brands. Competitive Benefits (Canada): Paid time off policies, RRSP match, medical, dental, and vision coverage, a variety of supplemental benefit options, and employee discounts across our portfolio of brands. Competitive Benefits (Costa Rica): We offer an attractive benefits package including primarily remote work, private medical and life insurance, additional paid time off, monthly allowances and reimbursements, employee discounts, and opportunities for professional growth. Interview Process Recruiter Screen