QA Automation Lead (Hybrid)

Description

About the company

Side (formerly PTW) is a global video game development and services provider, offering technical and creative solutions to many of the largest developers and studios around the world. Founded in 2009 and drawing on 30+ years' experience from our parent company in Japan, Side has since grown to become a global force with 20 studios in 14 countries across North America, Europe, South America, and Asia.

Our industry-leading services include game development, art production, audio production, quality assurance, localization, localization QA, player support, community management, and datasets.

Help us bring stories to the world! Join a global team of passionate gamers and contribute to delivering unforgettable game experiences.

Experience our side of life. For more information, visit www.side.inc.

About the role

We’re looking for a QA Automation Lead to build and scale our test automation strategy across Side's internal projects. In this role, you'll lead a distributed team of QA engineers across multiple locations, ensuring high-quality delivery through modern automation frameworks and best practices. You’ll work closely with product and engineering teams to integrate testing into every phase of the development lifecycle. This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll contribute technically while coaching and mentoring others.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow a team of QA engineers (both local and remote), providing guidance, performance feedback, and support.
• Design and implement scalable automation frameworks for web, mobile, and API testing.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, Engineering, DevOps) to embed quality standards from the ground up.
• Drive test planning, execution, and coverage across multiple projects with varying timelines.
• Ensure CI/CD pipelines are integrated with automated test suites for fast and reliable feedback.
• Monitor and analyze test results to identify trends, root causes, and opportunities for improvement. • Champion a culture of quality and accountability throughout the engineering organization. Manage test environments, data setup, and version control to support consistent and repeatable tests.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field preferred.
• 5+ years in QA, with at least 2 years in a leadership role focused on automation.
• Proven experience managing and mentoring QA teams across multiple time zones.
• Expertise in building automation frameworks using tools like Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, or similar.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD systems (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI).
• Solid understanding of software development life cycles (Agile/Scrum).
• Experience with test case management tools and reporting dashboards.
• Excellent communication and project management skills.

What we offer:

• Attractive compensation package, negotiable as per the level of experience.
• You will be working for the pre-eminent global provider of specialist services to the games industry and provided with full training and the opportunity to work on some of the biggest game clients, titles, projects, and tech in the world.
• Attractive remuneration, holidays, regular team competitions with great prizes; and inclusion into an extensive social calendar. Our environments thrive with collaborative teamwork with people from all around the world, different nationalities, and languages.
• A supportive community inclusive of LGBTQ+, and any age, ethnicity, religion, or disability. We care about the wellbeing of our employees and have a dedicated employee wellbeing program. We empower our people and offer regular progression opportunities to ensure our employees flourish.
• Learn as you work and be part of something real that changes the face of gaming - forever.
• Working with a global multi-lingual workforce with superb training and promotion and progression opportunities.