Hire a full-time QA engineer. Manual and automated, tested on a real staging build.
One person who finds the bugs before your customers do, automates the paths that must never break, and writes reports developers can fix without asking.
$3,500 a month, salary included. 2–3 vetted profiles in about two weeks.
What a QA engineer owns, day to day.
Exploratory testing
Every release tested the way customers use it, on desktop and mobile, bugs ordered by impact.
End-to-end automation
Playwright or Cypress on the paths that make money: sign-up, checkout, billing.
Bug reports developers act on
Steps, expected versus actual, the environment and a screen recording.
Release checklists
What runs before a release and right after it, on one page.
Tests people trust
Stable selectors, no fixed waits, and a suite in CI that doesn’t cry wolf.
Coverage you can see
What’s tested, what isn’t, and where the risk is, written down.
How we test a QA engineer.
A take-home test on Playwright + a staging build: about 2.5 hours of work, graded by an engineer. Cypress is fine if it’s their tool. Webflow and WordPress roles in the same family get a test of their own.
Part 1, about 60 min
Find the bugs
A small online store on staging, the day before a release. The five most important bugs, ordered by impact on the business, and what they didn’t get to test.
What passes Prioritized by impact, not by count.
Part 2, about 60 min
Automate the checkout
A happy path and a declined card, headless, with one command documented in a README.
What passes Stable selectors, no fixed waits.
Part 3, about 30 min
The bug report and the checklist
The full report for their number-one bug, with a recording, and the checklist for tomorrow’s release.
What passes Steps, expected vs. actual, and a screen recording a developer can act on.
Then, live
An interview with an engineer
They walk us through their work. We ask:
A bug only happens for some users. How do you reproduce it?
And one change, made live: add a test that catches one of the bugs they found.
Scorecard · QA engineer
ExampleProfile A
Engineer’s scorecard
- Exploratory testing
- Playwright or Cypress
- Bug reports
- Release checklists
“Reproduces the hard bugs and writes reports developers can act on.”
Watch: Newer to Cypress. Strongest in Playwright.
Playwright + a staging build · Graded by an engineer
Every profile you get comes with one, plus what they built and a short intro video in English.
Who gets through, and who doesn’t.
Must-haves
- Exploratory testing of web and mobile apps
- Playwright or Cypress, in TypeScript or JavaScript
- Bug reports with steps, environment and recordings
- Running tests in CI, such as GitHub Actions
- Clear written English with developers and product
Red flags we screen out
- Ten cosmetic bugs reported, the broken checkout missed
- Fixed waits to make a test pass
- Can’t reproduce it, so closes the ticket
- Reports that need a call to understand
- Every inconsistency treated as a blocker
Manual or automation?
Both, in that order. Automation protects the paths you already know matter. Exploratory testing finds the ones nobody thought of. Someone who only writes scripts misses the second; someone who only clicks around can’t keep up with weekly releases.
That’s why the test checks both on the same build: an hour exploring, an hour automating the checkout, and a report a developer can act on.
$3,500 a month. Salary included.
No placement fee, and nothing to pay until their first day. If they aren’t the right fit, we replace them at no cost, with a full handover.
Part-time or a set number of hours? Ask us on a call.
Today
A 30-minute call. You tell us the role and the stack.
In about two weeks
2–3 vetted profiles. The time goes into an engineer testing each one on your stack.
In week three
The person you pick starts, full-time on your team.
Questions
Something else? Ask us on a call
Do they automate tests or test by hand?
Both. The test checks exploratory testing and Playwright or Cypress automation on the same staging build, and the scorecard shows where each candidate is strongest.
Can they test our mobile app?
Mobile web is part of every test. If native app automation is a must-have (for example Appium or Detox), it goes in your hiring plan and into the test.
Will they fit our release process?
They work in your tracker, your CI and your Slack, on your hours, and write the release checklist with your team. Everything they write stays in your accounts.
What does a full-time QA engineer cost?
$3,500 a month for a full-time hire, salary included. No placement fee, and nothing to pay until their first day. Need part-time or a set number of hours? Ask us and we’ll quote it.
Tell us what your QA engineer would own. We’ll take it from there.
$3,500/month per hire. Nothing to pay until their first day.