The role
Hi! I'm Shriya https://www.linkedin.com/in/shriya-baddula-4b0b41386, and I lead QA at Ashby.
We're hiring a QA Engineer to help us test and strengthen the quality of our product.
I think of QA as something you build into the system, not as something you layer on top for added confidence. I'm not interested in gatekeeping quality or creating a process for its own sake. I care about feedback that's fast and useful, the kind engineers trust, and catching the problems users would actually notice.
That's what brought me to Ashby. Engineers take on a lot of ownership, including the quality of their work, which often means they test it themselves. QA here isn't about convincing people to care or taking quality off their plate. It's about being another set of eyes on a fast-evolving product. Sometimes that means seeing the edge case. Sometimes that means spotting the product's blind spot before it hits production.
In this role, you'll decide what to test, when to test, and which product areas are worth automating. We're a small team, so the work is mixed. We all roll up our sleeves when needed.
Most of your time, roughly 70%, is hands-on manual testing. You'll work with engineers and other stakeholders on features as they ship, reproduce bugs reported by customers, and, for larger launches, coordinate testing across an entire feature area.
The other 30% is automation. You'll write Playwright end-to-end tests and help expand test coverage. You do not need to be an SDET, and you do not need to have built a framework from scratch. You do need to be comfortable writing code, reading someone else's code, and getting better at both. If you've written some E2E tests and want to write more, that's the right starting point. We have an existing Playwright suite and page object structure you'll build on, and SDETs who will pair with you and help you grow.
What Ashby gives you in return is the best of both early and growth-stage environments. The agency and no-nonsense of a seed startup: you decide what to test, work directly with the people building it, and operate in an almost-no-meeting culture. The product-market fit and scale of a growth-stage startup: 100,000+ weekly active users who depend on our software, which means the things you catch actually matter.
We have notable customers like Notion, Linear, Shopify, and Snowflake. Our growth and retention metrics are best-in-class among our peers: we have tens of millions in ARR, growing >100% year over year, very low churn, and many years of runway. We’ll share more details once we meet.
WHY YOU SHOULD OR SHOULDN’T APPLY
- You have strong product instincts. You test like a user and know the difference between "it works" and "it works the way someone would actually use it."
- You're good at reproducing bugs. When something is broken, you narrow it down. You don't file vague bugs and move on.
- You are self-sufficient and can scope your own work. Given a feature and a spec, you decide what's worth testing and what’s not, and you know when to ask for help when something is taking too long.
- You want to grow on the automation side. You don't need to be an expert to be interested. You want to write more tests, get faster at it, and learn from the engineers around you.
- You write clearly. Your writing should be concise, clear, and easy to follow.
PUT ANOTHER WAY, YOU SHOULDN'T APPLY IF
- You think of QA as gatekeeping. We don't have sign-off gates, and we're not adding them. Your influence comes from the quality of your judgment, not from a checkbox.
- You're happiest when someone hands you a test plan and a set of instructions. This role operates on ownership, with you often deciding what to test and why.
- You want to stay at the surface. Testing Ashby well means understanding it well. The interesting problems are several layers in.
- You’re used to working on large QA teams with lots of ceremony and fixed roles.
- You want a pure automation or SDET role. The majority of this job is hands-on testing. If you want to spend your days building frameworks and tooling, apply for our SDET role instead; it's a better fit, and you'll be happier.
- You don't want to write code at all. A meaningful part of this role is automation, and we expect that to grow with you.
INTERVIEW PROCESS
At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past projects, simulate working together collaboratively, and talk through decisions.
Our interview process is four rounds:
1. Introduction call with Hiring Manager (30m, live)
2. Past Experience and Product Judgment deep dive (45 mins, live)
3. Technical Screen (Coding, 45 mins, live)
4. Leadership Screen + Debrief (1hr 15 mins, live)
Your hiring manager will be your main point of contact and prep you for interviews. Each round will have written guidance so you know what to expect (you’ll need minimal preparation). If we don’t give an offer, we’ll provide feedback!
YOUR FIRST THREE MONTHS AT ASHBY
Your first few weeks are about learning the product deeply, because good testing starts with understanding how customers actually use what we've built. You'll get hands-on fast, testing real PRs early and increasing in scope as you build context. On the automation side, you'll start by getting familiar with our existing Playwright suite and writing your first e2e tests with support from the team. Your manager will do a 30, 60, and 90-day review to give feedback and calibrate on how we work together.
It’s a team effort to get you successfully onboarded; you’ll have a peer paired with you to answer questions, pair with you on testing, and check in often to see if you need help. The rest of the team will run training sessions on our culture, product, engineering process, and technical architecture.
TECHNOLOGY STACK
I’m sharing our tech stack with the caveat that we don’t require previous experience in it (but a love of typed languages is helpful 😀): TypeScript (frontend & backend), React, GraphQL API, Node.js, Postgres, Redis.
For QA specifically, we use Playwright (TypeScript) for e2e tests, TestRail for test management, BrowserStack for cross-browser testing, and Postman for manual API testing.
BENEFITS
- Competitive salary and equity.
- 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.
- Unlimited PTO, and we will encourage you to take it.
- A minimum of 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave, covered by Ashby. The actual number may increase to satisfy local requirements.
- Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
- $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
- $250/month tool budget plus access to Claude, Cursor, and Codex with generous token budgets.
- If you’re in the US, we offer top-tier health insurance for you and your dependents, with 100% of premiums covered by Ashby. In other countries, we provide high-quality supplemental health insurance for you and your dependents, also fully covered by us.
Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.
Want to see if Ashby is the right place for you? Here’s https://nextplayso.substack.com/p/should-you-join-ashby a behind-the-scenes look at our engineering culture.
Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. We confirm that this advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.