Overview
Quality Assurance Lead Jobs in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia at MachShip
Title: Quality Assurance Lead
Company: MachShip
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Build the quality function from zero — and own the gate that decides what ships
MachShip is the cloud-based freight management platform that thousands of Australian businesses rely on to move freight every day — connecting shippers, 3PLs, and freight brokers with their carriers in one system. When we ship well, freight moves. When we don't, it doesn't. That's the weight this role carries.
This is MachShip's first dedicated QA hire. There's no function to inherit, no backlog of "how we've always done it" — just a real product, a real release cadence, and a genuine mandate to build the quality practice from the ground up across our engineering and product squads (~30 people).
You'll report directly to the CTO, and within your first year, you'll go from a function of one to leading a team.
The core of the job
Every release at MachShip passes through a quality gate before it reaches customers — evidence, not vibes, that it's ready. You define that gate, you run it hands-on, and you progressively build it into our CI/CD pipelines so the same rigour applies with less friction as we scale.
That means you're not choosing between automation and manual testing — you're doing both, deliberately:
- Automate where it pays off — regression suites at the right layers of the test pyramid, wired into CI/CD with fast feedback and real flake management.
- Get hands-on where it counts — you personally run targeted exploratory testing on high-risk releases, because some things only a sharp human catches.
- Hold the bar, not the team hostage — you verify readiness across the business (engineering, product, support, finance all tick their own box), you don't do everyone else's job for them.
You'll set the standards squads apply consistently, coach engineers and PMs so quality becomes a shared habit, and report real quality signal — escape rate, gate pass rate, release confidence — to leadership. Not "test cases executed."
What success looks like
- 90 days — the quality landscape is mapped, the biggest risks known, and a v1 quality gate is live on real releases.
- 6 months — the gate is standard for every release, automated regression coverage is running in CI/CD for the highest-risk surfaces, and at least two squads have adopted the balanced test strategy.
- 12 months — gate checks are progressively automated into the pipeline, escaped regressions are measurably down, release readiness is just… normal. And your first hire is in flight.
Who this is for
The "QA" title covers a lot of ground — this role needs the person who sits in the middle of it. You have:
- 7+ years in QA or quality engineering, including 3+ years at senior/lead level owning a quality practice
- A track record of establishing or materially maturing a QA function across multiple teams — not just running your own tests
- Genuine depth across manual, exploratory, and automated testing — and the judgement to know which belongs where
- Hands-on experience building automation frameworks and CI/CD test integration yourself — technical enough to build it, not just spec it
- Experience defining and operating a release quality gate that teams trusted rather than resented
- Strong written communication — you'll be setting standards and reporting to leadership in writing, often
Why MachShip
- You'll build something real, not maintain something inherited. The standards, the gate, the team — all yours to shape.
- Direct line to the CTO. No layers between your judgement and the decisions that matter.
- A company that treats quality as a value, not a slogan — we Sweat the Small Stuff, we're One Team when things go wrong, we Challenge with Curiosity rather than defer, and we Go Hard or Go Home — high standards, high trust, no passengers.
- Growth runway. This is a function of one today. It won't be for long — and you'll be the one hiring and shaping the team as it grows.
Ready to be the first line of defence for a platform that thousands of businesses depend on daily?
Please click apply now and submit your resume.
We look forward to connecting with you.
