QA & Test Automation Engineer
Quick answer
What does the QA & Test Automation Engineer role at National Digital involve?
A part-time (15–25 hours per week), remote QA role open Australia-wide, paying $85,000–$95,000 full-time equivalent pro rata. You'll own Playwright automation, CI quality gates, and accessibility and performance testing across production platforms.
QA & Test Automation Engineer – Playwright & CI Quality Gates
Part TimeRemote (Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia)15–25 hrs/week
National Digital is looking for a part-time QA & Test Automation Engineer (15–25 hours per week, remote anywhere in Australia) to own quality across a portfolio of production web platforms. This is an automation-first role: Playwright end-to-end suites, CI quality gates, accessibility and performance testing — plus the judgement to know what still deserves a human eye. As AI-assisted development speeds up how code gets written, disciplined verification matters more than ever; you'll be the person who makes 'it works' mean something. Salary range $85,000–$95,000 (full-time equivalent, pro rata) plus superannuation.
Salary
$85,000 - $95,000 per year
Key Responsibilities
- Design and maintain Playwright end-to-end and visual regression suites across client platforms
- Own CI quality gates — accessibility audits, Lighthouse performance budgets, regression runs
- Exploratory testing of new features before release
- Verify AI-assisted code changes and automated content pipelines with a sceptical eye
- Build pragmatic regression strategy across multiple concurrent platforms
- Triage, reproduce and document defects, and pair with engineers on testability
Requirements
- 3+ years in software quality assurance, including hands-on test automation
- Strong Playwright experience (or deep Cypress experience and willingness to switch)
- Comfortable owning quality steps in CI pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar)
- Accessibility testing skills — WCAG 2.2, axe, screen-reader spot checks
- API testing experience (REST/GraphQL) alongside UI automation
- Risk-based test planning — knowing what to automate, what to explore, what to skip
- Clear written communication: bug reports developers thank you for
- Tertiary qualification in IT/Computer Science, ISTQB certification, or equivalent demonstrated experience
- Based in Australia with full, unrestricted working rights (Australian citizen or permanent resident)
- Willingness to complete a National Police Check and provide professional references prior to commencement
Bonus Skills / Nice to Have
- Performance testing experience (k6, Lighthouse CI)
- Security testing fundamentals (OWASP)
- Contract testing between services
- Experience testing LLM-powered features — non-determinism, evaluation frameworks
Contract Details
Part-time / Remote (pro rata)15–25 hrs/week
Benefits
Genuinely flexible part-time hours (15–25 per week), remote anywhere in Australia$85,000–$95,000 full-time equivalent, pro rata, plus superannuationThe authority to hold the quality bar — gates you own actually block releasesSmall senior team with modern tooling and no QA-versus-dev politicsPro-rata professional development budget
How to Apply: Send a brief summary of your experience and, ideally, a link to automation work you can share — a public repo, a write-up, or just a war story about a bug that taught you something.
Apply for this role
Why this role exists
AI-assisted development has made writing code faster — which makes disciplined verification more valuable, not less. At National Digital, quality gates aren't a formality: automated accessibility, performance and regression checks block releases, and this role owns that bar across every platform we run. You'd be joining a deliberately small senior team — meet the people behind the platforms, or see how we hire and what we offer before you apply.