Manual QA Engineer

Manual QA Engineer Overview

About the Product

Alcor is an Employer of Record (EOR) platform that handles payroll processing, contractor management, invoicing, and legal compliance for global distributed teams. The platform processes real money across multiple currencies and jurisdictions — accuracy is non-negotiable.

Tech stack: PHP/Laravel, DDD + CQRS + Event Sourcing, Livewire 3, Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS, Carbon Design System, MariaDB, Redis, Docker, Playwright (E2E), GitHub, Jira, Sentry, LaunchDarkly.

How We Work

• Agile / Scrum with 3-week iterations
• Refinement is a core ceremony — QA participates actively, challenges ACs, identifies gaps before dev starts
• Retrospectives drive real change — we iterate on process, not just product
• Velocity tracking with story point estimation — predictability matters
• Quality over speed — but we move fast because the market doesn't wait. We achieve both through smart tooling and disciplined process
• AI-augmented development — AI has accelerated our delivery by 30%+. We now want to bring the same acceleration to QA. AI experience is a strong advantage; willingness to adopt AI tools is a must
• Growth culture — we grow fast, both personally and professionally. You'll expand your skills, take ownership, and level up continuously
  

What You'll Do

• Participate in refinements: ask questions, spot ambiguity, identify untestable ACs before development begins
• Write test cases in parallel with development — not after
• Test features end-to-end: happy paths, negative cases, edge cases, boundary conditions
• Own quality sign-off: your approval means this is release-ready
• Verify data integrity through API calls, database queries, and log analysis — not just UI clicking
• Collaborate with AQA engineer to identify automation coverage gaps
• Document bugs with precision: steps to reproduce, expected vs. actual, severity, environment
• Use AI tools to accelerate test case generation, exploratory testing, and regression analysis

What We're Looking For

• Destructive thinker — your goal is to break features, not confirm they work
• Autonomous — you own your domain; no one tells you what to test or when
• Proactive communicator — blockers are raised before development starts; tasks don't move to Done with open questions
• Business-oriented — you understand why a feature exists, not just what buttons to click
• Accountable — sign-off is a personal quality guarantee
  

Experience

• 3-5 years in QA
• Proven track record of finding business logic bugs, not just UI cosmetic issues
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum teams with active QA participation in refinement
• Familiarity with event-driven or async architectures (eventual consistency, queue-based processing)
• Experience testing financial/payroll/HR SaaS products is a strong plus
  

Technical Skills

• Browser DevTools - Network tab, Console, Application storage — daily usage
• API testing - Postman, cURL, or similar — verify backend behavior independently of UI
• SQL - Write queries to verify data state, check projections, validate calculations
• Git & GitHub - Read PRs, understand diffs, leave QA feedback in code review
• Jira - Structured workflow management, linked tickets, clear bug reports
• CI/CD awareness - Understand pipeline stages, feature branch environments
• Docker basics - Run local environment, read container logs
• AI tools - ChatGPT/Copilot/Claude for test case generation, exploratory testing ideas, log analysis
  

Nice to Have

• Experience with Livewire or server-rendered reactive UIs
• Familiarity with Playwright — ability to read E2E specs and suggest coverage
• Understanding of DDD / Event Sourcing concepts (aggregates, projections, event replay)
• Experience with feature flag testing (LaunchDarkly or similar)
• Testing PDF/Excel exports (payslips, invoices, reports)
• Experience with Shadow DOM / web components
  

Domain Knowledge You'll Build

• Payroll lifecycle: draft generated approved paid
• Contractor onboarding/offboarding state machines
• Invoice generation and multi-currency reconciliation
• Legal entity matching and compliance rules
• Feature flag rollout strategies
• Event sourcing implications: replay safety, projection consistency
  

What We Offer

• A team that values quality and gives QA a real voice in the process
• Direct impact on a product handling real payroll for real people
• AI-augmented workflow — you'll be among the first QA professionals to deeply integrate AI into the testing lifecycle
• Fast professional growth — expand into automation, domain expertise, or process leadership
• No micromanagement — ownership and trust from day one

Originally posted on Himalayas