QA Automation Engineer (Test Automation & AI) – Hybrid Algarve
Location: Greater Faro / Loulé, Algarve – Hybrid (2–3 days/week in office)
Employment Type: Full-time
Seniority Level: Mid–Senior
Compensation: €35.000–€45.000 gross annual (depending on experience)
About Aiera
We're helping Aiera.com, a fast-growing, well-funded American startup in the financial technology industry, to build their first European engineering hub in the Algarve .
Aiera develops a next-generation financial research platform, including its own AI models tailored to financial markets, used by institutional investors and financial professionals globally.
As a QA Automation Engineer in this new Algarve team, you'll play a key role in ensuring quality, reliability, performance, and UX for both traditional web features and AI-powered workflows across the platform.
Why This Opportunity Stands Out
* Real impact on product quality: Your work directly affects the stability, performance, and usability of a platform used by demanding financial professionals.
* Modern testing & automation stack: Work with pytest, Selenium, and other frameworks (Playwright, Cypress, etc.), plus CI/CD (GitHub Actions), to build robust, scalable test automation.
* AI domain: Help test AI-powered features and language-model-based tools, where output quality and edge cases really matter.
* Cross-functional collaboration: Partner closely with backend, DevOps, product, and support to define testing strategies, investigate bugs, and keep quality high as the platform evolves.
* Developer-friendly culture: Low bureaucracy, high ownership, and direct collaboration with senior engineers and leadership in the US.
* Lifestyle + career: Grow your tech career in a US-backed fintech while living a mediterranean lifestyle in the Algarve .
What You'll Work On
As a QA Automation Engineer, you will:
1. Collaborate with the QA Lead and engineering teams to design and maintain scalable automation frameworks for UI, API, and backend services.
2. Design and document test plans, test cases, and scenarios for both manual and automated testing, focusing on critical user journeys and high-risk areas.
3. Build and enhance reusable test automation frameworks
4. -- using Selenium and Playwright, or similar tools where appropriate.
5. Develop and maintain API testing frameworks for
6. -- REST and GraphQL APIs ,
7. -- and WebSocket endpoints that power real-time data pipelines and streaming features.
8. Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions) to ensure:
9. -- Continuous validation during deployments, and
10. -- Reliable nightly or scheduled regression runs.
11. Perform manual testing to validate:
12. -- Application functionality and correctness
13. -- Usability and UX of key workflows
14. Basic performance and behaviour under load (in collaboration with DevOps where needed)
15. Test AI-powered features and language-model-based tools :
16. Define and run test scenarios and evaluation sets for model outputs (relevance, correctness, consistency).
17. Validate edge cases, failure modes, and guardrails (e.g. hallucinations, incomplete answers, unexpected behaviours).
18. Help compare model versions (A/B) and track quality regressions when models, prompts, or data change.
19. Execute and maintain automated test suites, updating them as features evolve to keep coverage high and relevant.
20. Investigate and reproduce bugs :
21. -- Use logs, browser dev tools, and test environments to narrow down issues.
22. -- Provide clear, actionable bug reports (steps, expected vs actual behaviour, scope, environment).
23. -- Use tools like Jira (or similar) to log, track, and follow up on defects.
24. Collaborate with developers to ensure timely resolution of defects and regression issues, aligning on impact and priorities.
25. Participate actively in agile ceremonies when needed (daily stand-ups, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives) and be a key voice for quality in each cycle.
* Suggest and help implement improvements to testing processes, tools, and data, always looking for ways to increase efficiency and reliability.
Who We're Looking For
Must-have qualifications
* 4+ years of experience in QA / software testing, including web applications in a professional software development environment.
* Hands-on experience with test automation, including:
* -- pytest (or similar Python-based testing frameworks), and
* -- Selenium (or similar browser automation tools) as a core part of your test automation work.
* Solid understanding of testing methodologies and types (STLC awareness is a plus): functional, regression, integration, exploratory, and basic performance/load testing.
* Proven experience designing and documenting test plans, test cases, and scenarios .
* Comfortable investigating and reproducing bugs, using browser dev tools, logs, and test environments.
* Experience using bug tracking and collaboration tools such as Jira or similar.
* Ability to read and understand technical specs, API docs, and logs ; comfortable working around backend services and APIs.
* Professional proficiency in English (written and spoken).
* Willingness to work 2–3 days/week in the office in the Greater Faro / Loulé area.
Nice-to-have
26. Programming & backend familiarity
27. -- Experience working in environments with a backend focus (microservices, real-time data, etc.).
28. -- Comfortable with Python and related frameworks for writing tests, utilities, or lightweight automation.
29. -- Experience with GraphQL and testing or interacting with APIs (REST, GraphQL, WebSockets).
30. -- Understanding of relational databases (e.g., Postgres, MySQL) and using them to validate data flows and test results.
31. Automation & tooling
32. -- Experience with additional automation tools/frameworks such as Playwright, Cypress, TOSCA, or similar.
33. -- Experience with API testing (e.g., Postman, REST clients, or pytest-based API tests).
34. -- Familiarity with performance testing tools (e.g., Locust, JMeter, k6).
35. -- Experience with BDD practices and Gherkin syntax (feature files, scenarios).
36. -- Familiarity with test management tools and plugins such as Zephyr for Jira (test case management, traceability).
37. -- Practical exposure to the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) and related QA processes.
* Domain & AI
* -- Experience testing AI / ML-based systems (e.g. LLM tools, recommendation engines, search/ranking).
Location & relocation
We're especially interested in candidates who are:
* Already based in the Algarve and seeking an international engineering/product environment, or
* EU / EEA / Swiss / Brazilian citizens (or others with the right to work in Portugal without sponsorship ) interested in relocating to the Algarve .
How You Work (About You)
You'll thrive here if you:
* Have 3+ years in a professional software development environment and enjoy working closely with engineers (especially around backend & APIs).
* Are interested and excited by the challenges and opportunities of startup life : changing requirements, fast iteration, and high impact.
* See quality as a shared responsibility, not just a final gate.
* Are curious and systematic, and you enjoy exploring how features (and AI models) can fail in real-world scenarios.
* Care about clarity — in test cases, automation code, bug reports, and communication with teammates.
* Communicate well with cross-functional teams and are comfortable clarifying requirements and testing expectations.
* Participate actively in agile rituals and like having a say in what gets shipped and how.
* Are always looking for ways to improve testing processes, tools, coverage, and automation frameworks, not just execute predefined scripts.
* Value taking initiative and getting things done over rigid processes.
If you're energized by the idea of ensuring quality for a mission-driven, AI-focused fintech, and you'd like to grow your QA/automation career in the Algarve, we'd love to hear from you.