About this role
Zinc is looking for a Quality Lead to improve the quality of our product and the way we test it. This is the first hire into a new team, and it's an exciting place to come in: you'll define what Quality Engineering looks like at Zinc. 🚀 Zinc runs a Quality Assistance model. Engineers own the quality of what they ship, and that ownership sits at the same level as anyone whose job title has the word quality in it. You'll be the person who makes that model work, and who builds the foundation underneath it. The early months are about getting close to the codebase and the team. You'll work out where quality breaks down today, and build the regression coverage that catches those failures before a customer ever sees them. A large part of the job is coaching engineers to test their own work well. As the function settles, you'll start hiring a small team around you. Key Responsibilities 🗝️ Finding where quality breaks down 🔍 – Assess problem areas across the product and the engineering process, and work out where the real risk is concentrated. Building the safety net 🛡️ – Design and maintain regression test plans that give the team the confidence to ship at pace. Coaching engineers to test 🎓 – Train and support engineers so that good testing happens inside the pull request, which is what makes Quality Assistance actually work. Solving the hard cases 🧩 – Devise tools and approaches for the complicated scenarios that standard testing patterns can't reach. Building reliable test environments 🛠️ – Work with third-party tools to create mock systems and dependable test scenarios for the parts of the platform that are hardest to get at. Raising the bar across the SDLC 📈 – Introduce and embed quality best practices at every stage of the software development life cycle. Reporting on quality 📊 – Track and report the metrics that show how healthy the product really is, then use them to find the next process improvement. Building the team 🌱 – Grow a team of two to four people, starting with the hiring.