QA Architect

<div class="content-intro"><p><strong>Ready to accelerate your career?</strong></p>
<p>Cardata is where driven people make an outsized impact. We’re a small but mighty team transforming how businesses manage vehicle reimbursement — replacing outdated programs with smart, automated solutions.</p>
<p>Our vision is bold: to provide the most comprehensive, intelligent, and automated software and services for creating ideal vehicle programs. And we’re building toward that vision every single day.</p>
<p>Join us and you’ll find challenge, growth, and the chance to deliver real impact — helping hundreds of companies and thousands of drivers across North America focus on the work that matters most to them.</p></div><p>We're searching for a QA Architect to own quality strategy, automation, and CI enforcement across engineering. This role sets the standard for how we build, test, and ship software, not just execute test cases.</p>
<p>You'll lead the design of our test infrastructure, push automation-first practices across Engineering and Product, and make quality gates part of every stage of the SDLC, from planning to production. This role has the authority to block a release over quality concerns.</p>
<p>We need someone who can architect quality frameworks, create department-wide quality plans, wire automated tests into CI/CD, and shift the team's default from catching bugs late to preventing them early.</p>
<p><strong>What You'll Do</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Own the end-to-end quality strategy across web, APIs, and data layers, including standards, test coverage expectations, and release criteria</li>
<li>Assess existing products and features, identify quality gaps, and establish prioritized test plans based on risk and business impact</li>
<li>Build and scale automated testing frameworks across unit, integration, end-to-end, and regression testing</li>
<li>Define the tooling, architecture, and shared testing patterns used across engineering squads</li>
<li>Embed automated quality gates into CI/CD pipelines to catch regressions before they reach production</li>
<li>Establish release-readiness standards, testing thresholds, and coverage expectations across teams</li>
<li>Improve test reliability, pipeline health, automation coverage, and flakiness across critical user flows</li>
<li>Partner with DevOps/Platform to ensure test environments are stable, fast, and representative of production</li>
<li>Define and monitor engineering quality metrics that surface trends, risks, and areas for improvement</li>
<li>Partner with Engineering and Product to build testability into requirements, design, and technical planning</li>
<li>Drive shift-left practices so quality is considered earlier in the development lifecycle, not just before release</li>
<li>Mentor engineers and QA team members on automation, testing practices, and quality ownership</li>
<li>Participate in incident reviews and post-mortems and turn recurring quality gaps into systemic improvements</li>
<li>Act as a quality authority on releases, including holding releases when critical standards are not met</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>What You Bring</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>7–10+ years in software quality, including senior ownership of QA strategy, architecture, or automation</li>
<li>Experience as a QA Architect, Staff/Principal SDET, Principal QA Engineer, or similar</li>
<li>Proven experience building and scaling test automation frameworks</li>
<li>Hands-on experience with tools such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Jest, Postman, or similar</li>
<li>Strong experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD platforms such as GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or Jenkins</li>
<li>Experience with TypeScript/JavaScript testing environments, REST APIs, and relational databases</li>
<li>Strong understanding of modern web application architecture and quality engineering practices</li>
<li>Experience with performance/load testing tools such as <strong>k6, Locust, or JMeter</strong> is a plus</li>
<li>Experience using AI development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, or Copilot to improve testing and automation</li>
<li>Interest in applying AI to areas such as test generation, defect detection, and pipeline optimization</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Compensation</strong></p>
<p>In line with Ontario’s Pay Transparency legislation, the salary range for this role is $130,000 – $160,000 CAD annually, based on experience, skills, and alignment with the role requirements. This is a vacant position, and we are hiring with intention and seeking someone who will bring new perspective, contribute meaningfully to the team, and grow with the organization.</p><div class="content-conclusion"><p><strong>Why you’ll love working at Cardata:</strong></p>
<p>We’ll be honest — Cardata isn’t for everyone. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, take extreme ownership, and constantly push yourself (and your work) to be the best, you’ll fit right in.</p>
<p>You’ll be surrounded by driven teammates who genuinely care — about the work, about our customers, and about helping each other succeed. Together, we take on ambitious goals and celebrate the wins along the way.</p>
<p>What we offer in return for you bringing your best:</p>
<ul>
<li>Remote work and flexible working hours</li>
<li>Mentorship and development opportunities (to help you achieve your career goals!)</li>
<li>Extended medical & dental benefits</li>
<li>Healthcare spending account</li>
<li>$3,000 annual Health and Wellness Spending Account to support your overall wellbeing</li>
<li>Employee assistance program (EAP)</li>
<li>Flexible (Unlimited) Time Off: No annual cap on vacation, supported by a trust-based, flexible approach to time away.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Cardata is an equal opportunity employer. All candidates will be equally considered without regard to race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, language, citizenship, creed, religion, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, physical and/or mental handicap or financial ability. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome to bring their authentic selves to work.</em></p>
<p><em>If you require accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know.</em></p></div>