QA Chapter Lead

QA Chapter Lead

Location

Nairobi

Reports to

Head of Engineering Digital Experience

Squad embedding

Embedded and active in one squad - not a standalone QA manager

Chapter scope

Digital Experience: 4 Squads (4-6 embedded QA engineers)

About Watu

Watu is a fintech company operating across Africa and Latin America, providing device financing and financial services to customers historically excluded from the formal financial system. We finance motorcycles, smartphones and other productive assets through a technology-first, data-driven approach - enabling customers to own income-generating assets and build credit histories.

Our platform supports millions of customer journeys across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and beyond, with continued expansion into LATAM.

The Role

The QA Chapter Lead is a senior QA engineer who carries two roles simultaneously. First, you are an embedded QA engineer in one of the squads - attending ceremonies, writing automated tests, defining acceptance criteria, and owning the Definition of Done for your squad. Second, you are the QA Chapter Lead for your engineering function, responsible for QA standards, tooling, automation frameworks, and test strategy across all squads in the function.

You report to the Head of Engineering - not to a Tech Lead. This reporting line is intentional: it gives you the organizational standing to influence QA practice across squads you are not embedded in, and it ensures the Head of Engineering actively drives QA strategy rather than delegating it entirely to individual Tech Leads.

This is not a QA manager role. There is no QA team to manage. There is a chapter of QA engineers across squads, and you are their technical lead and standards-setter - not their line manager. The QA Guild (monthly cross-chapter meeting with the counterpart Chapter Lead from the other engineering function) is your primary mechanism for cross-function consistency.

What You Will Own

As embedded QA engineer in your squad

• Attend all squad ceremonies - sprint planning, daily standup, sprint review, retrospective. QA is in the room from the start, not brought in at the end.
• Define acceptance criteria with the Product Owner before each sprint. Stories without clear acceptance criteria do not enter the sprint.
• Write and maintain automated test suites for your squad's domain - unit, integration, E2E as appropriate. Test coverage is your responsibility.
• Own the squad's Definition of Done quality gate - nothing ships without passing the criteria you have defined and maintained.

As QA Chapter Lead across your function

• Define and maintain QA standards for the function: test pyramid structure, automation tooling, naming conventions, coverage thresholds, and CI gate configuration.
• Onboard new QA engineers into the chapter - they join a squad, but they join your standards. Define the onboarding process and the baseline expectations.
• Run the monthly QA Guild with the counterpart Chapter Lead from the other engineering function. Alignment on tooling, shared frameworks, and Definition of Done consistency across the full engineering organization.
• Own the automation framework selection and evolution - evaluate new tooling, deprecate old, and maintain documentation that any QA engineer can follow.
• Report to the Head of Engineering on QA chapter health: coverage trends, flaky test rates, automation backlog, and any systemic quality issues.

Who You Are

Essential

• 5+ years of software QA experience with at least 2 years in a Lead QA role where you drove test strategy across more than one team.
• Strong automation engineering skills - you write test code to a production standard. Your test suites are maintainable, readable, and run reliably in CI.
• Experience with API testing at depth: REST, contract testing, integration test design. Most of Watu's QA surface area is backend and API-level.
• Experience defining and maintaining QA standards in an Agile squad environment - not as a gatekeeper at the end of a sprint, but as an embedded contributor from day one.
• Experience in Java-based backend environments - you can read Java code, understand the architecture, and write tests that reflect it accurately.

Strongly preferred

• Experience in fintech, payments, or digital financial services - you understand what it means to test systems that move money.
• Experience with performance and load testing - understanding payment rail throughput, API concurrency limits, and how to surface them before production does.
• Mobile app testing experience is mandatory for one of the QA Chapter roles (Android surface).
• Experience building or evolving a QA chapter, guild, or community of practice across multiple teams.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted test generation tooling - test case generation, regression triage, and synthetic test data creation using LLMs.

How to Apply

Send your CV and a brief note on why this role to the Watu talent team. We run a structured process: an initial conversation with the relevant Head of Engineering, a technical interview, and a final conversation with the wider leadership team. We move quickly for the right candidate.

We are an equal opportunity employer and actively work to build a team that reflects the diversity of the markets we serve.

All personal information provided will be processed in accordance with applicable data protection laws and regulations and used solely for recruitment and selection purposes. 

Watu  ·  Technology Organization  ·  QA Chapter Lead 

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