[Hiring] Senior QA Engineer @Watu

Role Description

As a Senior QA Engineer at Watu, you are embedded in a squad - the senior technical authority on quality within it. You do everything a QA Engineer does - ceremonies, acceptance criteria, automated test suites, the Definition of Done - but you also own the harder problems:

• Test architecture
• Performance and load testing
• Contract testing
• The squad's most complex integration surfaces

You report to your squad's Tech Lead for day-to-day work. For QA standards and tooling, you sit in the QA Chapter led by the QA Chapter Lead, who reports to the Head of Engineering. You are the natural deputy to the QA Chapter Lead - representing your squad in the QA Guild when needed, mentoring QA Engineers across the chapter, and often owning a specific chapter-wide initiative (a framework, a tooling migration, a testing discipline) end to end.

This is a senior individual-contributor role, not a management role. You lead through technical depth and example, not through authority over other QA engineers' day-to-day work.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of QA engineering experience in a software product environment
• Strong automation engineering skills - writing test code to a production standard in Java, Python, or JavaScript
• API testing depth - REST API testing, contract testing, integration test design, HTTP semantics, and JSON schema validation
• Experience with performance and load testing
• Comfortable operating without a QA manager
• Experience in Java-based backend environments

Requirements

• Attend all squad ceremonies - sprint planning, daily standup, review, retrospective
• Define acceptance criteria with the Product Owner before each sprint
• Own test architecture for your squad's domain
• Lead performance and load testing for your squad
• Own the squad's Definition of Done quality gate
• Mentor QA Engineers in your squad and across the chapter
• Deputise for the QA Chapter Lead where needed
• Own a chapter-level initiative
• Triage the squad's hardest test failures
• Use AI/LLM tooling actively

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Flexible working hours
• Opportunities for professional development
• Diverse and inclusive work environment

Company Description

Watu is a fintech company operating across Africa and Latin America, providing device financing and financial services to customers historically excluded from the formal financial system. We finance motorcycles, smartphones and other productive assets through a technology-first, data-driven approach - enabling customers to own income-generating assets and build credit histories.

Our platform supports millions of customer journeys across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and beyond, with continued expansion into LATAM.