Job description
Hi! I’m Shriya, and I lead QA at Ashby.
We’re hiring an SDET to level up the systems behind how we test. Building a strong QA infrastructure is the fastest way to help engineers move quickly without sacrificing quality as our product becomes more powerful and the team grows.
I think of QA as something you build into the system, not layer on top for added confidence. I’m not interested in gatekeeping quality or creating a process for its own sake. I care about building a QA infrastructure that generates fast, helpful feedback, the kind that engineers trust and want to use, and helps us catch problems users would care about most.
That’s what brought me to Ashby. Engineers here already take ownership of what they ship. QA at Ashby isn’t about convincing people to care; it’s about making it easier to do the right thing at scale.
Sometimes, that means seeing the edge case; sometimes, that means spotting the product’s blind spot before it hits production.
This is not a test executor role. This is a deeply technical, hands-on role. Being technical here means knowing how to design a system others want to use and how to debug and simplify what already exists. You’ll write and maintain end-to-end tests, contribute to our test infrastructure, and work closely with engineers to build fast, confident feedback loops, especially in areas where the product is powerful and evolving quickly. Most of your work will focus on building systems, but we’re a small team, so when things get busy, you might help out with manual testing too. We all roll up our sleeves when needed.
You’ll be the first dedicated automation hire, reporting to me. We don’t silo quality, everyone at Ashby owns it but your job is to make it easier for the whole team to do that well. You’ll be writing code most days. That might mean building a test framework, extending a test setup to make it 10x faster, or debugging flaky tests that slow the team down. You’ll bring product intuition into how you build test systems, understanding what users rely on, where edge cases live, and how to steer engineers to the right tests, not just more of them. You’ll focus on building systems that unlock leverage but also ensure we’re covering what matters. If the tools are fast but miss real issues, or catch every issue but slow us down, they’re not doing their job. We don’t count test cases; we count time saved, risks reduced, and overall reliability.
We’ve written a lot about engineering and quality at Ashby, (we recommend taking a look at Ashby’s Operating Principles and our Blog). You’ll help turn that vision into the tooling and workflows our team actually uses.
Why You Should or Shouldn’t Apply
You’ve written and maintained test automation frameworks from scratch. You know what makes a test helpful, what makes it flaky, and what makes it someone else’s problem
You think like a user. You know how to spot edge cases, understand how someone might use a feature, and turn that into meaningful test coverage.
You enjoy working on test infrastructure that supports engineers and removes friction from their workflow
You get excited about shipping less brittle tests, faster. You don’t treat test automation like a checklist. You care if it’s usable
You don’t need to be told what “done” looks like. You can scope, build, test, and maintain your own tools and systems
Put Another Way, You Shouldn’t Apply If
You haven’t written code in a while, or don’t enjoy doing it daily
You think of QA as gatekeeping, not enabling
You prefer validating requirements over building and improving systems
You’re happiest when someone hands you a test plan and a set of instructions
You’re used to working on large QA teams with lots of ceremony and fixed roles
What We’re Building
Talent teams aspire to build a hiring process that identifies great candidates, moves them quickly through the interview process, and provides an excellent experience for the candidate. To accomplish this, recruiters perform thousands of daily tasks to coordinate and relay information between candidates, interviewers, and hiring managers. Teams struggle to keep up!
Scheduling a final round is an excellent example of our customers’ challenges. A recruiter needs to collect availability from the candidate, identify potential interviewers, perform “Calendar Tetris” to find who is available to interview the candidate, schedule on the earliest date possible, and perform any last-minute adjustments as availability changes. They must perform this while considering the interview load on each individual and whether interviewers need to be trained and shadowing others. 🥵
Ashby provides talent teams with intelligent and powerful software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. We put a lot of effort into designing products that are approachable to beginners but mastered and extended by power users. In many ways, spreadsheets set the bar here (and are what we often replace!).
Interview Process
At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past projects and simulate building test infrastructure and working together.
Intro Call (30 mins)
Past experience deep dive (45 mins)
Tech Assessment (System Design) (45 mins)
Take Home Presentation (45 mins)
Virtual Onsite + Meet the team (2hrs 15 mins)
We’ll prep you for every step, and we always provide feedback if we don’t move forward
Your First Two Months at Ashby
You’ll ship code in your first week. We’ll pair you with someone who can help you get familiar with our product, systems, and tooling
By the end of month one, you’ll have shipped something that made our test suite more reliable or faster. By the end of month two, you’ll have made something that didn’t exist before (a new test tool, framework, or visibility layer) and taught someone else how to use it.
Technology Stack
Our tech stack is TypeScript (frontend & backend), React, a mix of SASS modules and Stitches, Apollo GraphQL, Node.js, Postgres, and Redis. We’re looking for folks with TypeScript and Playwright experience.
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.
Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
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.
If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.
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.
