Senior Automation Tester - (Level 3)

Automation Tester — Senior (L3)

Island Role  ·  Quality & Domain Function  ·  Full-Time

What this role is

The Automation Tester at L3 is the Island’s quality engineering anchor on engagements where the product has moved beyond greenfield into real, complex business workflows. You are not a junior tester who has picked up a framework. You are someone who has built Playwright suites from scratch, tested against live healthcare platforms, and written automation that actually gates production deployments.

At L3 you are expected to operate without hand-holding. The Lead PE or Lead CE will give you context and acceptance criteria. From there, you own the automation surface of the product. That means Playwright E2E frameworks, it means understanding the healthcare domain the product operates in, and it means leading the quality team through every release cycle.

All three. Not two of three.

The Three Pillars — All mandatory

This role has three non-negotiable pillars. If you cannot demonstrate all three at the time of application, do not apply. There is no partial credit.

01 Automation Framework  —  You build it, maintain it, and own it

You design, develop, and maintain scalable end-to-end automation frameworks using Playwright (preferred), Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript. You are not inheriting someone else’s suite and running it. You are authoring it. AI-assisted via Playwright MCP and Codegen is expected. Untouched Codegen output is not acceptable.

02 Healthcare Domain Expertise  —  Industry knowledge — earned or owned

You understand the real-world clinical and operational workflows the product supports. You know the difference between a UI defect and a broken healthcare workflow. You understand what HIPAA compliance requires at the software level, what FDA software validation entails, and why a broken EHR flow is a different category of failure to a misaligned component. If you have already tested healthcare platforms, your application is stronger for it. If you do not have it yet, you are expected to develop it actively on the job.

03 AI-Driven Testing  —  You implement, not just experiment

You use Playwright MCP, self-healing locators, and agentic test generation as execution tools — AI-assisted, fast, and rigorous. You are expected to deploy these tools in production test suites that gate deployments. If you have never implemented AI-assisted testing beyond running Codegen, do not apply for this role.

What you will own at L3

• Playwright E2E test suites for all production-critical user journeys — written and maintained by you, not inherited
• Cross-browser and cross-device execution strategy via BrowserStack Automate and App Automate
• AI testing integration — Playwright MCP, ZeroStep, or equivalent agentic frameworks deployed in live suites
• CI/CD pipeline integration — GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or GitLab — you own the test gate configuration
• Test management and traceability — BrowserStack Test Management, Jira/Xray, or TestRail — defect log and sign-off decision are yours
• Healthcare compliance validation — ensuring automated suites adhere to HIPAA, FDA software validation, and applicable health data privacy laws
• RESTful API test coverage — Postman, SuperTest, or RestAssured — integrated into the regression cycle
• Release sign-off authority — you decide what blocks a production deployment and what does not
• Mentoring L1 and L2 testers on the Island — reviewing their scripts, correcting their defect logs, and raising the quality bar of the pod
• Setting the automation standard for the Island — if an L1 does not know how to structure a Playwright suite, that is your problem to fix
• Onboarding new Island members to the product’s healthcare domain context — you hold the institutional knowledge of the clinical business logic and are expected to transfer it
• Flagging process gaps upstream — if the CE’s acceptance criteria are too vague to automate against, you raise it before the sprint starts, not after

Proof-based qualifications

We do not assess candidates on years of experience or job titles. We assess candidates on proof of capability. When you apply, you must be prepared to demonstrate the following:

What you must show

Automation Framework

A Playwright test suite you authored for a real product engagement — at least three E2E scenarios, a maintained structure, and evidence of CI/CD integration. Codegen-assisted is fine. Untouched Codegen output is not.

Healthcare Domain

A compliance audit, UAT report, or workflow analysis that demonstrates you understand the healthcare business logic behind the product — not just its interface. EHR, telehealth, or HIPAA-regulated flow analysis preferred.

AI Testing

Evidence of Playwright MCP, self-healing locator implementation, or agentic test generation used in a real or representative project. Describe the problem it solved, not the tool name.

Team Leadership

A concrete example of mentoring a junior QA engineer, defining an Island-level testing standard, or owning a cross-team quality roadmap.

Generic QA certifications and tool lists on a CV are not proof. Showing us actual work output is.

On healthcare domain expertise — a direct note

Healthcare domain expertise at L3 means you can audit a product against the real-world clinical workflow it is supposed to support. An EHR product should behave the way an actual clinician expects it to behave. A telehealth platform should reflect how patients and providers actually interact in a regulated care environment.

If you have already tested products in a regulated healthcare domain — EHR platforms, telehealth applications, HIPAA-compliant insurance systems — your application will be treated as strong from the start. You already know what breaks in that space and why it matters.

If you do not have it yet, you are expected to develop it on the job, through active engagement with the client’s clinical workflows, their regulatory environment, and their competitive landscape. We will not do it for you. You will need to take ownership of your own domain fluency.

Either path is acceptable. Showing up at L3 without any healthcare domain fluency and with no plan to develop it is not.

AI tooling at Fountane

Claude and Cursor are the primary tools for thinking, drafting, and executing work at Fountane. Playwright MCP and Codegen are approved for the Automation Tester function as starting points for test script generation. The expectation is that you use them to accelerate — not to replace — your own judgment about what to test and how.

AI tools are not a listed skill here. They are the working method. If you are not already integrating Claude, Cursor, or Playwright MCP into your daily workflow, you will need to get there fast.

Who should not apply

• You have never written a Playwright test. You plan to learn on the job. This is not the right moment for that.
• Your entire QA background is manual testing. You have not authored or maintained an automation framework in the last two years.
• You treat healthcare compliance as someone else’s concern. You test UIs, not clinical workflows.
• You need a Lead to tell you what to automate before you start building.
• You are looking for a role where the scope is narrow and the deliverables are defined for you each sprint.
• You have experimented with AI testing tools but have not deployed them in a real project.

What comes next

L3 is not a ceiling. The path to Lead Automation Tester requires demonstrated ability to design the full automation strategy for an Island, present quality benchmark reports directly to client executive and clinical stakeholder teams, and manage the quality engineering function independently across multiple product streams. Promotion is not tenure-based. There is no timeline. It is triggered by demonstrated capability at the next level’s complexity tier.

About Fountane

Fountane is a technology ventures lab - one part product studio, one part startup engine. We build high-quality software and AI products for clients ranging from fast-moving startups to large enterprises, and we co-build and invest in new companies when we see the right opportunity.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Minneapolis, we have grown to 60+ people across four continents and were recognised as one of America’s fastest-growing companies, ranking No. 699 on the Inc. 5000 with 595% three-year growth.

We are serious about craft, direct about expectations, and operate at the frontier of AI-assisted engineering. Lead PEs here carry real authority and real accountability - over delivery, over people, and over client outcomes. If that combination is what you are looking for, this is the place.