QA Automation Engineer

QA Automation Engineer Location: London, Waterloo Team: Product Working arrangement: Hybrid (3+ Days in Office) About Happl We’re building the next generation of employee benefits infrastructure. We help global teams design, manage, and scale benefits that actually work for their people by using AI, across flex allowances, benefits, insurance, recognition, and wellbeing, all in one intelligent platform. We partner with fast-growing and enterprise organisations to replace fragmented benefits stacks with a single, flexible system that works globally, adapts locally, and puts employees first. Your mission As a QA Automation Engineer at Happl, your mission is to protect product quality at speed. You’ll own the automation strategy and execution across our web and mobile apps, ensuring every release is reliable, scalable, and safe to ship. You’ll work closely with Product, Engineering, and Customer Success to catch issues early, improve confidence in deployments, and help us move faster without compromising the customer experience. This is a role for someone who thrives in a fast-moving startup environment, enjoys building robust test systems, is comfortable using AI tools, and wants to influence how we ship software as we scale. The role This role sits within our Product team and works cross-functionally across the full software development lifecycle. You’ll help shape our testing approach across: - AI First approach to testing - End-to-end automation for core user journeys - Testing for platform reliability and integrations - CI/CD quality gates and release confidence - Manual testing where needed to support rapid iteration You’ll be a key part of how Happl scales engineering quality as we grow our product surface area and customer base. What you’ll be doing - Designing, writing, running, and maintaining automated test suites (E2E) - Utilising AI to build reliable test coverage for critical flows (admin setup, employee journeys, payroll, tax, reporting) - Collaborating with engineers and product to define acceptance criteria and test plans - Creating scalable test data strategies and environments for repeatable automation - Running exploratory/manual testing when needed (especially around new features) - Debugging test failures and working with engineers to identify root causes - Implementing and improving CI/CD pipelines to support fast, confident deployments - Comfortable building API tests - Maintaining clear QA documentation and test reporting - Raising the bar on quality culture across the team (not just “finding bugs”) What we’re looking for - 4+ years experience in QA Engineering (automation + manual) - Experience utilizing AI as part of test strategy, such as Claude and ChatGPT - Strong experience with JavaScript and/or TypeScript - Hands-on experience with Playwright or Cypress for browser automation - Experience with a test runner such as Jest or Mocha - Solid understanding of QA processes and methodologies (test planning, STD/STP) - Comfortable writing and validating SQL queries - Experience working with work item tools like Linear, Jira (or similar) - Experience working with CI/CD workflows and quality gates - Confident communicator who can collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders - Highly organised, detail-oriented, and proactive in driving improvements If you don’t meet every requirement but feel this role fits your trajectory, we’d still love to hear from you. Why join Happl - Help shape the future of employee benefits - Competitive base salary and commission - Meaningful equity in an early stage growing business - Flexible hybrid working from day one - Access to your own Happl benefits platform - Optional enrolment in Private Health Insurance - Optional enrolment in Dental insurance, including family cover - A flexible Wellbeing budget to spend on whatever wellbeing means to you - Learning & Development (L&D) allowance - Pension scheme from day ... (truncated, view full listing at source)