QA Engineer

Your Mission

The QA Engineer is responsible for ensuring that features and fixes behave as intended across both the web UI and underlying APIs, are usable, and do not introduce unacceptable risk to the platform.

The role provides hands‑on testing and clear feedback so teams can ship changes with confidence, rather than relying on customers to find issues.

Scope and Context

QA Engineers work closely with one or more product‑aligned engineering teams, as well as Product Managers, Engineers, and the QA Team Lead.

The focus is manual testing, with a substantial emphasis on exercising APIs directly (for example via Postman or curl) as well as validating user‑facing flows through the web UI.

You will be involved throughout the delivery lifecycle: understanding requirements, identifying risks, planning test coverage, validating changes in pre‑production, and supporting safe release.

Key Responsibilities

UI and End‑to‑End Testing

• Plan, execute, and document manual test cases for web UI features and cross‑cutting user journeys.
• Validate that the UI correctly reflects and handles responses and errors from underlying APIs.
• Perform exploratory testing to uncover edge cases, usability issues, and unexpected behaviour.
• Maintain lightweight smoke and regression scenarios for critical end‑to‑end flows.

API‑Focused Testing

• Design and execute manual API tests using tools such as Postman, curl, or similar.
• Validate request and response structures, status codes, error handling, and data integrity.
• Chain API calls to simulate realistic workflows and ensure correct behaviour independent of the UI.
• Identify gaps in API behaviour, validation, and documentation based on real‑world usage patterns.

Working with the Team

• Participate in refinement, planning, and design discussions to surface testability and quality concerns early, particularly around API contracts and UI/API interactions.
• Collaborate with engineers to clarify expected behaviour, edge cases, and acceptance criteria for both UI and API changes.
• Provide clear, concise feedback on risks, issues, and test results to engineers, Product, and the QA Team Lead.
• Help the team make sensible trade‑offs when time, scope, and quality risk are in tension by explaining the impact of different options.

Test Design, Bugs, and Triage

• Translate requirements, user flows, and API specifications into structured test conditions and scenarios.
• Prioritise testing effort based on risk, impact, and customer usage, not blanket coverage.
• Reproduce, investigate, and document issues with clear steps, including failing UI flows and/or API requests and responses.
• Verify fixes at both the API and UI layer, checking for regressions before changes are released.

Automation and Tooling (Nice to Have)

• Maintain and organise reusable API request collections (for example, in Postman) to support consistent testing.
• Suggest pragmatic opportunities where small amounts of automation or scripted checks can reduce repetitive manual work or speed up feedback loops.
• Use available tools (logs, monitoring, feature flags, test data management) to make UI and API testing more effective.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a pure test automation / SDET role; manual testing of UI and APIs is the core of the job.
• Not a people‑management role (line management sits with the QA Team Lead).
• Not an architecture or delivery ownership role (owned by Engineering Tech Leads and Engineering Team Leads).
• Not a gate‑keeping role; the focus is on making quality and risk visible so the team can make informed decisions.

What You’ll Bring to the Role

Key Experience and Capabilities

• Solid experience in a manual QA or software testing role, ideally in a SaaS or product environment.
• Strong ability to design and execute tests for both web UIs and APIs.
• Comfortable using tools such as Postman and curl, including working with authentication, headers, and payloads.
• Comfortable working with issue trackers, pre‑production environments, and basic debugging tools (for example, browser dev tools, logs).
• Clear, direct written and verbal communication when describing defects, risks, and test outcomes.
• Any experience with test automation (UI or API) is a bonus, but not essential.

Personal Qualities

• Curious about how things actually work end‑to‑end, from API through to UI.
• Pragmatic about where to focus testing effort, and comfortable explaining those choices.
• Collaborative and respectful in working with engineers and product peers.
• Calm and methodical under time pressure, especially close to release.
• Willing to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and say “this doesn’t look right” even when it’s uncomfortable.

Benefits

• Remote & flexible working – with hybrid options in London or Chichester
• Fantastic team culture based on trust and belonging.
• Laptop & home office budget – £500 to set up your ideal workspace.
• Private Medical Insurance with Aviva, including Dental & Optical.
• Group Life Insurance & Yulife Wellbeing & Rewards.
• Mental well‑being support – Access therapy, mental health sessions, and yoga through a free premium subscription to Headspace.
• EAP confidential benefit – 24/7 access to compassionate guidance & expert advice
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Training, support, and personal development

Linnworks is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EoE). We believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and background leads to a better environment for our employees and better service for our customers.

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