Senior QA Engineer

Department: Engineering

Location: Canada - Vancouver, Canada - Toronto

Compensation: CA$100K – CA$145K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

As vCluster Labs’ Senior QA Engineer, you will bridge the gap between rapid feature development and enterprise-grade reliability, owning the quality strategy for our core Kubernetes virtualization technology.

You will act as the gatekeeper of quality, starting with a hands-on, deep-dive approach to manual testing to establish the baseline before architecting our future automated frameworks.

As a Senior QA Engineer, your role will include:

• Manual Validation & Strategy: Initially focus heavily on manual testing to gain a deep understanding of our product architecture. You will conduct exploratory testing to identify usability issues, edge cases, and regressions not yet covered by automation.

• Backend Testing Expertise: Drive the testing strategy for our backend systems. You will dive deep into API interactions, database states, and Kubernetes resource management to ensure stability in complex distributed environments.

• Path to Automation: Design and develop the roadmap for transitioning manual workflows into automated test frameworks (using Go or Python) for backend and UI testing.

• CI/CD Integration: Eventually integrate automated tests into our pipelines (GitHub Actions, etc.) to ensure high-confidence, fast feedback loops for our engineering team.

• Cross-Functional Advocacy: Collaborate closely with Engineering and Product teams to influence features early, advocate for testability, and align on quality standards before code is even written.

This role could be a fit for you if you bring:

• Deep QA Expertise: 5+ years of experience in QA or Software Testing (with 1+ year in a senior capacity). You are an expert in backend testing and comfortable validating complex logic without a UI.

• Kubernetes Fluency: Working knowledge of Kubernetes environments and distributed systems. You have the analytical skills to diagnose infrastructure-related issues, not just application bugs.

• Automation Readiness: While this role starts manually, you possess strong programming skills in at least one language (Go preferred, or Python) and have the ability to build tooling and automation suites when the time is right.

• Startup Adaptability: You thrive in ambiguity and can juggle multiple parallel projects. You understand that in a fast-moving environment, priorities shift, and you are capable of maintaining quality speed.

• Ownership Mindset: You have strong initiative and are able to identify what needs to be done—whether it's writing a test plan or debugging a CI failure—and follow through independently.

Bonus points for:

• Hands-on experience with major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure).

• Deep understanding of CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, Jenkins).

• Previous experience working with open-source commercialization or developer tooling products.

• Experience working in or with distributed, remote-first teams.

About vCluster Labs

We are a venture-backed tech startup striving to be the leading force in enabling platform engineers. We raised +$30M from top-tier VCs such as Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, Doordash) and are in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to complement our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distributed around the globe and we have a remote-first work culture.

We're the company behind vCluster, an open-source technology for virtualizing Kubernetes (+10k GitHub stars). Open source is part of our DNA.

The adoption of our commercial product based on vCluster has grown extremely fast (multi-million dollar revenue) and our customer base includes some of the biggest companies in the world, including 6 Global Fortune 500 companies as well as some of the fastest-growing tech unicorns.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive Salary: We offer a competitive compensation package, including equity.

• Platinum-Level Insurance: Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance, including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).

• Flexible Working Schedule:  You have a doctor’s appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won’t have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.

• Workplace Flexibility:  We’re very flexible about where you work. We know things can change in life and we’re happy to adjust the work environment for you along the way.

Culture & Values

At vCluster Labs, we value and stand for:

1. Open Source, Open Mind: We are actively contributing to and maintaining open-source projects. Internally, we foster meritocracy — the strongest ideas win, no matter who or where they come from.

2. Build Tomorrow’s Standards, Intentionally: We don't just ship software; we define the state-of-the-art of tomorrow. We are fearless in tearing down old approaches to build something better, but we are disciplined in how we do it because we know our users rely on our technology to run mission-critical infrastructure platforms.

3. Create Wow: We measure success by the experience we generate, both inside and outside the company. For our customers, this means impressive speed and intuitive experiences. For our team, this means going the extra mile to support one another and to continuously drive each other to new heights.

4. Own the Outcome: We understand that our responsibility doesn't end when a task is checked off; it ends when the value is delivered. We connect our daily individual actions to the broader success of the company and our customers.