QA Automation Engineer

Building the Future of Open Finance Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system. The team Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients. The Pro team is responsible for everything to do with the trading backend services such as the matching engine, market data gateways, internal and external APIs, and various other trading services. The team is located globally and responsibilities are split into sub-teams, working with various tech stacks. Our teams code in Rust and work agile around the globe. Recently, the team played a critical role in scaling Kraken's trading infrastructure. As part of the team, you'll partner closely with frontend and mobile engineers to build quality into every stage of development, helping deliver reliable, intuitive experiences across both web and mobile platforms. The opportunity As a QA Automation Engineer within Kraken Pro Engineering, you'll be embedded directly within engineering teams, partnering with frontend and mobile engineers throughout the software development lifecycle. You'll design and maintain automated UI tests, validate customer journeys, and ensure our web and mobile applications meet the highest standards of quality, reliability, and performance. This role combines automation engineering with exploratory and manual testing to ensure every release delivers an exceptional user experience. Responsibilities - Design, build, and maintain automated UI tests for web and mobile applications. - Execute exploratory and manual testing to validate new features, edge cases, and customer journeys. - Collaborate closely with frontend and mobile engineers throughout the software development lifecycle. - Review product requirements and identify quality risks early in development. - Investigate defects and partner with engineers to resolve issues efficiently. - Contribute to automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and quality engineering best practices. - Help improve test coverage, release confidence, and overall product quality. - Leverage AI tools such as Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, and MCP integrations to improve engineering productivity and testing quality. What you bring - Experience building automated UI tests using Playwright or similar automation frameworks. - Experience testing web and mobile applications, including Android and/or iOS utilising tools such as Appium, Maestro, Espresso. - Strong understanding of automation alongside exploratory and manual testing practices. - Familiarity with modern frontend technologies and customer-facing application testing. - Experience working with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing within engineering teams. - Strong troubleshooting skills with the ability to investigate complex UI issues. - Experience collaborating closely with software engineers in Agile environments. - Excellent communication skills and a passion for delivering high-quality user experiences.