Quality Assurance Specialist

Role overview

This contract role protects the quality of operational software by finding broken workflows, unclear requirements, difficult-to-reproduce defects, and unexpected AI behavior before users encounter them. The emphasis is practical: understand the job the software is meant to support, test beyond the happy path, and communicate findings precisely enough for someone else to reproduce and fix them. Good testing here considers whether a workflow truly works for its user, not merely whether it satisfies a narrow acceptance criterion.

Responsibilities

- Explore end-to-end workflows and identify failures that may be missed by scripted happy-path checks. - Create practical test plans from incomplete, changing, or messy requirements. - Probe unusual paths, edge cases, and failure modes after the expected flow appears to work. - Test AI tools, automations, data pipelines, internal tools, or other products with variable and difficult-to-predict behavior. - Write precise defect reports that explain the conditions, steps, observed result, and why the issue matters. - Assess software against the user’s actual task, including cases where the system is technically functional but operationally ineffective.

Requirements

- Detail-oriented testing discipline and a natural tendency to investigate the unexpected path. - Ability to understand a workflow well enough to evaluate whether it supports the intended job. - Skill in turning ambiguous requirements into focused, useful test coverage without unnecessary process overhead. - Precise written communication and a consistent ability to produce reproducible bug reports. - Experience testing AI behavior, automations, data pipelines, internal tools, or products with substantial edge-case risk. - Comfort testing before every requirement is perfectly specified and treating AI errors as testable behavior rather than as an excuse to stop.

Benefits and work setup

This is a contract role with remote, US-friendly working arrangements. The hiring process values demonstrated work over interview performance and may start with paid contractor work on a real client or internal project, with the possibility of a longer relationship if the fit is strong.