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Senior QA Tester (L3)
Note: All Sage QA staff are Senior (L3) Staff or higher
Why Senior Level is Our Minimum Standard
Quality Assurance at Startr requires deep product knowledge, technical understanding, and sophisticated judgment that can only come with experience. This contrasts with other roles like Customer Support, where junior team members (L1-L2) can effectively handle routine customer communications and basic technical issues under guidance.
While junior team members can provide valuable support activities like basic testing tasks or documentation, they cannot deliver the comprehensive QA that our products demand. The distinction is critical: support work can be learned through templates, guidelines, and supervised practice, while QA work requires independent critical thinking and deep system understanding from day one.
What Makes QA Different from Support Work:
QA requires autonomous decision-making in ambiguous situations where there are no scripts or predetermined answers. Unlike support representatives who can escalate complex issues or follow established procedures, QA testers must:
- Think beyond happy path scenarios and identify edge cases that could break user workflows
- Understand our technical architecture well enough to write meaningful bug reports that help developers quickly locate and fix issues
- Make critical decisions about issue severity and escalation paths without supervisory input
- Balance testing pragmatism with thoroughness based on feature criticality and release timelines
- Communicate effectively with cross-functional teams throughout the development process, often serving as the bridge between user experience and technical implementation
- Anticipate user behavior patterns and test scenarios that haven't been explicitly documented
- Evaluate risk vs. impact for potential issues and make judgment calls on what constitutes a release blocker
These competencies typically take 3-4 years to develop in a support or technical role before transitioning to QA. A Junior or Mid-level team member lacks the experience base to make these independent judgments reliably. By maintaining Senior (L3) as our minimum level for QA staff, we ensure that every person responsible for product quality has the experience and judgment necessary to protect our users and maintain our standards without requiring constant oversight.
Skill
Mastery
- Demonstrates broad depth of knowledge of our products. Produces well-considered, high-quality QA reports beyond the happy path. Skilled in our entire testing toolset.
Scope
- Consistent demonstration of applying the right balance of QA based on the scope and criticality of new features. Can assume responsibility for coordinating the testing work of third- party vendors.
Technical
- Has a good understanding of our technical architecture as it relates to QA, providing technical insight when writing bug reports. Competence using browser dev tools. Runs apps locally, demonstrates good GitHub skills.
Judgment
- Proactively identifies QA problems, knows when to raise bugs on our issues board vs On Call, and when to raise an incident. Pays attention to detail and can demonstrate testing pragmatism.
Engagement
Ownership — Manager of One
- Oversees feature QA end-to-end. Logs bugs and issues, provides assistance as fixes make it through to production.
Communication
- Writes high-quality bug reports. Trusted to provide well-written QA support and feedback throughout feature development. Provides feedback on the QA process, suggesting improvements in the interests of the company. Forges strong relationships with product programmers and designers.
Prioritization
- Balances inbound work, paying attention to schedules and ensuring the right AIs are QA’d at the right time. Prioritizes tasks and AI work with little direction, minimising QA blockers for dev pairings. Works confidently and effectively, persists when faced with uncertainty or ambiguity but pulls in support when needed. Contributes to planning within the QA team.
Trust
- Work is reviewed with some back and forth and the occasional need for material direction or implementation changes. Trusted to run QA end-to-end for product features that requires little or no oversight or correction. Makes material contributions to documentation.
Coachability
Feedback
- Receives constructive feedback with a growth mindset. Has self-awareness about core strengths and areas for development. Provides specific, well-considered feedback within area of expertise, when asked. Is able to disagree and commit.
Lead QA Tester (L4)
Skill
Mastery
- Intimate knowledge of our entire product suite. Acts as a subject matter expert on our QA approach, product features and shortcomings. Skilled in other testing disciplines such as accessibility, security or advanced tools (e.g. Litmus, Browser Stack, Test Rail)
Scope
- Defines our QA approach and sets the standard for the team. Oversees all product QA across a cycle, including coordination of third-party testing firms. Ensures product pairings are considering all types of risks, including Security, Performance, and Accessibility as well as functional during development. Actively levels up less-experienced QA testers.
Technical
- Broad understanding of our technical architecture across all platforms, as it relates to QA. Skilled in testing across multiple OSes: macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS. Deep understanding of browser nuances and browser dev tools. Strong command of accessibility concerns and how these relate to CSS and Javascript.
Judgment
- Demonstrates strong cultural alignment with Startr doctrine when making decisions. Can identify judo opportunities during product development. Is consistently sought for advice across testing and accessibility disciplines. Proactively identifies issues relating to work quality of internal or external QA.
Engagement
Ownership — Manager of One
- Coaches other testers on the quality and testing approach for major AIs and initiatives. Defines and upholds our QA standards. Maintains our ‘Top 5’ lists, preventing overpopulation. Works with product and engineering leadership to assist progress with delivering these fixes.
Communication
- Sets the standard for bug reporting. Defines QA standards, ensures they’re upheld. Forges strong relationships with QA peers, and cross-department. Writes absorbing cycle Scoutings and Discovery-Logs. Demonstrates AI management best practices. Ensures leadership is kept informed, async, on QA progress. Celebrates team and individual achievements.
Prioritization
- Is organised and efficient. Closely collaborates with Product to triage and prioritise resolution of bugs / quick wins. Can plan entire cycles for a team. Can offer critical product insight drawn from extensive experience. Regularly challenges their team and discipline to help drive AIs forward, makes process improvements year on year.
Trust
- Consistently sought by colleagues for assistance with QA, feature scope or issue severity decisions. Capable of directing the QA team strategy for an entire cycle. Oversees the work of third-party firms (testing, accessibility), providing feedback and ensuring appropriate quality.
Coachability
Feedback
- Seeks constructive feedback on own work with a growth mindset. Has self-awareness about core strengths and areas for development. Provides developing oversight to senior, mid, and junior QA testers. Can disagrees and commit.