QA Engineering Lead

About the role

SafeBoda is looking for a senior, hands-on QA Engineering Lead in Kampala who takes end-to-end ownership of quality across its mobile apps, web applications and backend services. The role combines individual-contributor automation engineering, building test automation strategy and infrastructure from the ground up, with day-to-day leadership of a QA team.

Key responsibilities

• Build and own the test automation strategy: design, write and maintain automated test suites (API/E2E, mobile UI, web frontend and backend) across all core services, mobile apps and web apps.
• Integrate automated suites into CI/CD (Argo pipelines) with accurate, actionable coverage reporting.
• Represent QA in cross-functional planning with PMs, Engineering and DevOps so testing timelines are realistic from the start.
• Lead and manage QA engineers: set individual goals, run regular 1:1s and develop automation and structured test-design skills.
• Define and enforce QA process standards: test case documentation, bug triage and severity criteria, release sign-off criteria and regression scope.
• Own real-time visibility into QA capacity and ticket status, and partner with Engineering leads to fix recurring bottlenecks.
• Track production bug trends, run retrospectives and act as the quality gate for Android, iOS and backend releases, communicating go/no-go recommendations.

Required profile

• 5+ years in QA/software testing, including 2+ years in a lead or senior individual-contributor automation role.
• Proven experience building automated test suites from scratch, including API testing and mobile automation.
• Experience managing or mentoring QA engineers, including performance management and skills development.
• Comfortable defining and defending QA metrics and OKRs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Prior experience in fintech, ride-hailing, delivery or other high-transaction platforms is a strong plus.

Required skills

• API testing (Postman/Newman, REST Assured or similar)
• Mobile automation (Appium, Espresso/XCUITest or similar)
• CI/CD pipelines (Argo, Jenkins, GitLab CI or similar)
• Testing of complex, multi-service backend systems; microservices and async/event-driven flows; payment or wallet reconciliation experience is a strong plus