Senior QA Engineer

We are a venture-backed tech startup striving to be the leading force in enabling platform engineers. We raised +$30M from top-tier VCs such as Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, Doordash) and are in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to complement our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distributed around the globe and we have a remote-first work culture.

We're the company behind vCluster, an open-source technology for virtualizing Kubernetes (+10k GitHub stars). Open source is part of our DNA.

The adoption of our commercial product based on vCluster has grown extremely fast (multi-million dollar revenue) and our customer base includes some of the biggest companies in the world, including 6 Global Fortune 500 companies as well as some of the fastest-growing tech unicorns.

As vCluster Labs’ Senior QA Engineer, you will bridge the gap between rapid feature development and enterprise-grade reliability, owning the quality strategy for our core Kubernetes virtualization technology.

You will act as the gatekeeper of quality, starting with a hands-on, deep-dive approach to manual testing to establish the baseline before architecting our future automated frameworks.

As a Senior QA Engineer, your role will include:

• Manual Validation & Strategy (80% Focus): Initially focus heavily on manual testing to gain a deep understanding of our product architecture. You will conduct exploratory testing to identify usability issues, edge cases, and regressions not yet covered by automation.

• Backend Testing Expertise: Drive the testing strategy for our backend systems. You will dive deep into API interactions, database states, and Kubernetes resource management to ensure stability in complex distributed environments.

• Path to Automation: Design and develop the roadmap for transitioning manual workflows into automated test frameworks (using Go or Python) for backend and UI testing.

• CI/CD Integration: Eventually integrate automated tests into our pipelines (GitHub Actions, etc.) to ensure high-confidence, fast feedback loops for our engineering team.

• Cross-Functional Advocacy: Collaborate closely with Engineering and Product teams to influence features early, advocate for testability, and align on quality standards before code is even written.

This role could be a fit for you if you bring:

• Deep QA Expertise: 5+ years of experience in QA or Software Testing (with 1+ year in a senior capacity). You are an expert in backend testing and comfortable validating complex logic without a UI.

• Kubernetes Fluency: Working knowledge of Kubernetes environments and distributed systems. You have the analytical skills to diagnose infrastructure-related issues, not just application bugs.

• Automation Readiness: While this role starts manually, you possess strong programming skills in at least one language (Go preferred, or Python) and have the ability to build tooling and automation suites when the time is right.

• Startup Adaptability: You thrive in ambiguity and can juggle multiple parallel projects. You understand that in a fast-moving environment, priorities shift, and you are capable of maintaining quality speed.

• Ownership Mindset: You have strong initiative and are able to identify what needs to be done—whether it's writing a test plan or debugging a CI failure—and follow through independently.

Bonus points for:

• Hands-on experience with major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure).

• Deep understanding of CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, Jenkins).

• Previous experience working with open-source commercialization or developer tooling products.

• Experience working in or with distributed, remote-first teams.

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive Salary: We offer a competitive compensation package, including equity.

• Platinum-Level Insurance: Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance, including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).

• Flexible Working Schedule:  You have a doctor’s appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won’t have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.

• Workplace Flexibility:  We’re very flexible about where you work. We know things can change in life and we’re happy to adjust the work environment for you along the way.

Since we are a fast-moving startup, you will not be number 14,589 in our company but rather become an essential part of our team right from the start:

• Fast Application Process: We will typically get back to you within a week. No need to polish your resume for us. Just send us some links (e.g. LinkedIn, etc.), answer a few questions about your previous experiences, and hop on a quick Zoom call with one of our team members to see if you’re a good fit. We will respond quickly and make hiring decisions within days rather than months.

• Open-Minded Work Environment: You can always speak your mind - no company politics or unnecessary formalities. We are operating in a lean, honest, and efficient way and we are looking for different perspectives, constructive feedback and creative, motivated people who want to make a difference.

• Grow With The Company: We are a small company right now but we are growing incredibly fast because we work on something that has a lot of value to engineering teams in large enterprises. Joining vCluster Labs early will give you the chance to advance much faster to the next step on the career ladder than in any larger company.

• Responsibility From Day 1: You will see right from the start that your work will immediately have an impact in our company and you can shape the future of this company together with the rest of our team. Grow with us and benefit from being part of this journey from the start.

At vCluster Labs, we value and stand for:

• Technical Excellence: We are determined to build best-in-class technology and ship high-quality software because we know that our users are engineers themselves.

• Customer Obsession: We are going above and beyond to make our customers and users happy, which means striving for great usability, excellent documentation and support as well as fast response times for feature requests and bug reports.

• Impressive Speed: From user feedback to shipping a new feature to address this feedback, we usually take less than a week in most cases and our users absolutely love us for this.

• Bold Innovation: We are constantly questioning the state-of-the-art to find and address important issues in our space, even if that means abandoning any existing technologies and starting from scratch again.

• Open Source & Open Mind: We are actively contributing and maintaining open-source projects and we believe that building an open-minded team culture that respects different perspectives and welcomes constructive feedback is equally paramount to our success.

vCluster Labs provides equal opportunities for all candidates. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment for everyone who becomes part of our team. We are also actively promoting measures to reduce bias throughout our hiring process to ensure that everyone gets the same opportunities.