Manager, QA

The Atlantic is looking for a hands-on, strategic QA Manager to build and own our engineering quality practice. We aim to support a more thoughtful American public by powering and expanding our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism — and we want the products we ship to be worthy of that mission. This is a player-coach role: you will work directly on testing and automation while also developing the processes, standards, and vendor relationships that raise the quality bar across the entire engineering organization.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 7+ years of QA experience, with at least 2 years in a lead or senior QA role

• Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks (Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, or similar)

• Experience managing QA contractors, vendors, or offshore testing teams

• Experience developing or significantly improving QA processes and standards within an engineering organization

• Strong understanding of software development lifecycles and agile/CI-CD practices

• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with JS/TS testing frameworks and React component testing

• Familiarity with AI-assisted test generation tools and workflows

• Background in consumer-facing web or mobile products

• Experience building a QA practice from an early or low-maturity baseline

• Familiarity with performance testing and Core Web Vitals monitoring

• Experience with visual regression testing (Chromatic, Percy, or Applitools)

• Familiarity with accessibility testing standards (WCAG 2.2) and tooling

• Experience using observability and monitoring tools (Datadog, Sentry) as quality signals in production

As The Atlantic's QA Manager, you will:

• Own the engineering quality practice: define testing standards, processes, and tooling for the organization

• Manage the day-to-day relationship with our offshore QA partner and oversee the work of a team of five QA contractors

• Work hands-on as a practitioner — designing test strategies, writing automated tests, and contributing directly to quality

• Partner with engineering teams across Reader Experience, Membership & Growth, Interactive, and Mobile to embed quality practices into their workflows

• Define and uphold quality standards for AI-powered features, including test approaches for LLM-driven experiences and non-deterministic outputs

• Integrate quality gates into CI/CD pipelines to enable fast, confident deployments

• Identify testing gaps and systemic quality risks across the product and surface them to engineering leadership

• Evaluate and recommend QA tooling and automation frameworks as the organization's needs evolve

• Track and report on quality metrics and trends to the VP of Engineering

• Help build a culture of shared ownership around quality — not just within dedicated QA, but across how teams work

• Participate in on-call rotation (outside of standard business hours) to monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve production incidents, ensuring system reliability and uptime.

• The role will at times include night, early-morning, and weekend work.

As The Atlantic's QA Manager, you are:

• A practitioner and a strategist: You’re equally comfortable writing test automation and developing org-wide QA strategy. You don’t choose between doing the work and improving the system.

• AI-fluent: You understand how AI tools are reshaping Quality Engineering both as productivity multipliers in your own workflow and as new categories of features requiring thoughtful testing approaches.

• Process-minded: You know what a mature QA practice looks like and how to build toward it incrementally in an organization starting from a low baseline.

• An effective vendor partner: You’ve managed offshore or contractor QA relationships and know how to set expectations, maintain accountability, and get consistent quality output across time zones.

• Technically capable: You have hands-on experience with automation frameworks and can contribute directly to the codebase.