Quality Assurance Engineer

Job Title: Quality Assurance Engineer

The Opportunity 

ACA believes that we can deliver the world’s best GRC software to our blue-chip financial services client base of over 3500 firms. We are seeking top talent to join us in our journey to build and deliver “The SalesForce of Compliance”.  Compliance Officers in finance have been stuck in the past, with inefficient, manual effort driving their compliance programs. ACA’s ComplianceAlpha is deployed at 800+ clients and more daily to help modernize that. We are investing significantly to drive technology usage at our clients. 

The QA Engineer role is responsible for the development and delivery of an automation-first test suite for our ComplianceAlpha products.  Each QA Engineer will be part of a geo-located agile product team, and will provide guidance to the team during planning and refinement as well as execute on the plan during the sprint. 

We are looking for an imaginative self-starter with a passion for great software and a proven track record of developing test automation solutions that drive exceptional quality and productivity.  Only motivated problem solvers willing to take the initiative and demonstrate consistent follow-through need apply.  Qualified candidates will have extensive experience successfully implementing test automation. 

Your key responsibilities 

• Align closely with the Connectors development team and operate as the embedded Quality Engineer within the Scrum team, driving quality ownership across design, development, and delivery.
• Define, implement, and continuously improve quality engineering best practices for backend, API, and data‑pipeline–driven systems, ensuring high‑quality, compliant, and reliable releases.
• Design, develop, and maintain automated test solutions for service‑level, API, data, and integration testing, with appropriate coverage across functional and non‑functional scenarios (data integrity, idempotency, retries, and tenant isolation).
• Act as a strong advocate for quality and automation, influencing engineering practices early in the development lifecycle (shift‑left testing, testability, and risk‑based testing).
• Review product backlog items, technical designs, and acceptance criteria to identify test scenarios, edge cases, and quality risks, and ensure they are addressed within each sprint.
• Partner with product management, engineering, and platform teams to align quality strategy with the Connectors roadmap, including new integrations, orchestration changes, and architectural migrations.
• Collaborate closely with software engineers to identify root causes of defects, particularly in complex integration and data‑processing flows, and support timely resolution.
• Validate release readiness through end‑to‑end testing, regression testing, and operational checks, ensuring connectors meet defined quality, compliance, and observability standards before deployment.
• Monitor and analyze test results, failures, and production issues to continuously improve test coverage, automation reliability, and overall system quality.
• Communicate quality status, risks, and progress clearly to the product owner and engineering leadership, ensuring transparency and alignment with sprint and release goals. 

Skills and attributes for success 

Experience

• 6-10 years of relevant experience in non-UI applications testing and automation.
• 1-2 year of experience with playwright automation, preferably using typescript. 

Core Quality Engineering Skills

• Strong experience testing backend, data-intensive systems (APIs, ETL pipelines, event-driven architectures).
• Proven ability to design and execute end-to-end integration tests that validate data integrity across multiple systems.
• Deep understanding of non-functional quality risks such as data loss, duplication, incorrect routing, idempotency, and retry safety.

Programming & Automation

• Working proficiency in Python for:
• API and service-level test automation
• Writing test utilities, data validators, and verification scripts
• Understanding and debugging Python-based services (async behaviour, retries, error handling)
• Experience testing REST APIs (HTTP status codes, idempotency, error models, pagination, size limits).
• Experience with Playwright and TypeScript for UI-related validation.
• Ability to validate complex state machines (e.g., message lifecycle transitions in a database).

Databases & Data Validation

• Strong PostgreSQL / SQL skills:
• Writing queries to validate message states, deduplication logic, retries, and data consistency
• Reconciling data across multiple stores (DB vs object storage vs downstream systems)
• Experience validating structured and semi-structured data (JSON, CSV, metadata).

Linux / Unix & Test Data Handling

• Comfortable working in Unix/Linux environments, including:
• Running and understanding command-line utilities
• Creating and validating test data via scripts or shell commands
• Experience testing file-based integrations (SFTP, object storage like S3 or equivalent).

Cloud & Integration Concepts

• Familiarity with cloud-native integration patterns:
• Object storage (e.g., S3)
• Message queues / eventing systems (e.g., SQS, EventBridge or equivalents)
• Understanding of secure handling of credentials, secrets, and sensitive data in test environments.

Quality Ownership & Operational Validation

• Experience validating production-like workflows, including:
• Monitoring, alerting, and telemetry
• Reprocessing and retry workflows
• Release readiness and regression testing for data pipelines
• Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills, especially for silent failures.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience testing data pipeline orchestration systems such as Apache Airflow (or similar tools).
• Familiarity with containerized applications (Docker) and ECS/Fargate–style deployments.
• Experience validating compliance-sensitive systems where data correctness, tenant isolation, and auditability are critical.
• Familiarity with observability and analytics tools:
• Telemetry/event validation
• Log analysis
• Reporting layers (e.g., Athena / SQL-based analytics)
• Prior experience working with integration platforms, ingestion services, or third-party vendor APIs.

What we look for 

We are interested in innovative technology professionals with strong vision and a desire to stay on top of trends in the industry. If you have a genuine passion for new technologies and transforming an entire industry, this role may be for you. 

What working at ACA offers 

We offer a competitive compensation package where you’ll be rewarded based on your performance and recognized for the value you bring to our business. In addition, our Total Rewards package includes medical and dental coverage, pension and 401(k) plans, and a wide range of paid time off options as well as a flexible work environment. You’ll also be granted time off for designated ACA Paid Holidays, Summer Fridays, Personal/Family Care, and other leaves of absence when needed to support your physical, financial, and emotional well-being.  

 
Plus, we offer: 

• Continuous learning: You will develop the mindset and skills to navigate whatever comes next. 

• Success as defined by you: We will provide the tools and flexibility, so you can make a meaningful impact, your way. 

• Transformative leadership: We will give you the insights, coaching and confidence to be the leader the world needs. 

• Diverse and inclusive culture: You will be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs. 

Why join our team?  

We are the leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisor in financial services. When you join ACA, you'll become part of a team whose unique combination of talent includes the industry's largest team of former regulators, compliance professionals, legal professionals, and GIPS® standards verifiers in the industry, along with practitioners in cybersecurity, ESG, and regulatory technology. 

Our team enjoys an entrepreneurial work environment by offering innovative and tailored solutions for our clients. We encourage creative thinking and making the most of your experience at ACA by offering multiple career paths. We foster a culture of growth by focusing on continuous learning through inquiry and curiosity, and transparency. If you’re ready to be part of an award-winning, global team of thoughtful, talented, and committed professionals, you’ve come to the right place. 

More about ACA 

ACA was founded in 2002 by four former SEC regulators and one former state regulator. The founders saw a need for investment advisers to receive expert guidance on existing and new regulations. 

Over the years, ACA has grown both organically and by acquisition to expand our GRC business and technology solutions. Our services now include GIPS standards verification, cybersecurity and technology risk, regulatory technology, ESG advisory, AML and financial crimes, financial and regulatory reporting, and Mirabella for establishing EU operations. 

What we commit to 

ACA is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We conduct our business without regard to actual or perceived age, race, color, religion, disability, caregiver, marital or partnership status, pregnancy (including childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), ancestry, national origin and citizenship, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, sexual and reproductive health decisions, military or veteran status, creed, genetic predisposition, carrier status or any other category protected by federal, state and local law.  

ACA is firmly committed to a policy of nondiscrimination, which applies to recruiting, hiring, placement, promotions, training, discipline, terminations, layoffs, recall, transfers, leaves of absence, compensation and all other terms and conditions of employment.  

Here at ACA, we have created a variety of programs to promote ACA’s culture of inclusivity and work hard to ensure that all our employees have an equal opportunity to contribute to ACA and feel that ACA is exactly where they belong.