Overview
Senior Quality Assurance Engineer Jobs in Porto, Portugal at Socium – Teams Done Differently
Title: Senior Quality Assurance Engineer
Company: Socium – Teams Done Differently
Location: Porto, Portugal
Work Setup: Fully Remote, but prefers candidate based in Porto, Portugal
Schedule: 5 working days in a week
Contract Duration: Initial 12 months
What You'll Actually Do
Hands-On Testing (60–70% of your time)
- Execute functional, regression, integration, and exploratory testing
- Work through and continuously reduce an existing test backlog
- Validate complex workflows including onboarding, transactions, compliance rules, and scoring engines
- Test REST APIs using Postman or similar tools
- Write and execute SQL / T-SQL queries to validate backend data integrity
- Coordinate and support UAT with internal and external stakeholders
- Produce clear, reproducible defect reports with risk assessment
Note: Test execution is a core, ongoing responsibility, not a temporary cleanup phase.
Automation & Tooling (20–30% of your time)
- Design, build, and maintain API test automation (primary focus)
- Develop UI automation for critical user journeys
- Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines
- Own and evolve the automation approach — not just scripts
- Select and implement tools pragmatically (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium — tool choice is flexible)
- Debug failing tests using logs, test output, and basic source-code understanding
Quality Strategy & Process (10–20% of your time)
- Define and enforce release readiness criteria and quality gates
- Establish test coverage metrics, dashboards, and reporting
- Improve defect triage and root-cause analysis processes
- Document QA standards, test strategies, and best practices
- Promote a shift-left testing mindset within the engineering team
- Ensure test evidence and results support auditability and regulatory expectations
Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field
- Strong English communication skills (written and verbal)5+ years in Software Quality Assurance
- Proven hands-on experience testing web applications and REST APIs
- Experience with SaaS platforms (FinTech / RegTech / Banking strongly preferred)
- Hands-on exposure to Azure-based environments
- Comfortable operating in fast-paced, backlog-heavy environments
Technical Skills
- Test Design: Test planning, case design, defect lifecycle management
- API Testing: Postman or equivalent, REST validation, schema & response checks
- Database: SQL / T-SQL for backend and data integrity validation
- Automation: Hands-on experience with at least one framework (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium)
- CI/CD: Familiarity with pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar)
- Performance: Basic load and performance testing knowledge
- Security: Understanding of access control, data isolation, PII handling
- Engineering: Comfortable reading logs and basic source code to diagnose issues
- Tools: JIRA (or equivalent), Git basics
Who You Are
- Execution-focused: You take pride in clearing backlogs and shipping quality
- Hands-on by default: You test, automate, and debug yourself
- Detail-oriented: You spot edge cases others miss
- Pragmatic: You balance ideal processes with real-world constraints
- Proactive: You raise risks early and propose solutions
- Adaptable: Comfortable switching between manual and automated work
- Quality-driven: You understand quality is everyone's job — and you champion it
This Role Is Not for You If
- You want to manage testers instead of testing yourself
- You expect a greenfield QA environment with no backlog
- You prefer rigid processes over practical execution
- You are uncomfortable operating with evolving requirements
