QA Automation Lead

The posting, as Kira wrote it

We live in a world where technology is rapidly changing the educational experiences of students and teachers everywhere, and we have the opportunity to shape how this change takes place. Kira's mission is to harness transformative AI technologies to make world-class personalized teaching and learning accessible to everyone. Kira is a rapidly growing startup backed by top-tier Venture Capital funds including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Andrew Ng’s https://aifund.ai/AI Fund, and Primavera.

As our QA Automation Lead, you'll own and elevate the quality bar across our platform, and build the team that sustains it. This is a player-coach role: you'll spend most of your time hands-on (designing automation, performance testing, and quality systems) while also mentoring and, over time, growing and leading a small QA team.

This is not a traditional QA role. We're looking for a senior, pragmatic engineer who is first and foremost a doer with management experience -- someone who ensures high product quality for teachers and students while modernizing how we approach testing, performance, and release confidence, including thoughtfully applying AI tools to accelerate test creation, maintenance, and coverage. You'll be the dedicated owner of end-to-end test coverage, performance test scaffolding, and load testing, and you'll have at least one QA engineer reporting to you.

This is a full-time position that requires flexibility with work hours and availability outside of regular business hours. We have offices in San Francisco, CA and New York City, NY and we ask that employees work from one of the two locations and come into the office in-person 4 days a week (Wednesdays WFH).

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own and evolve our quality strategy across frontend, backend, and AI services, and be the dedicated owner of end-to-end test coverage, performance test scaffolding, and load testing
• Lead and grow a small QA team — mentoring engineers, setting standards, and managing at least one direct report — while staying hands-on yourself
• Partner closely with product and engineering to define clear acceptance criteria and prevent defects early
• Design and implement scalable automated testing across end-to-end, integration, regression, and performance layers
• Own performance and load testing for critical workflows — login surges, classroom activity, assignment submissions, real-time features, and AI services — building realistic workload models from production usage, establishing baselines and capacity targets, and validating the platform ahead of peak usage
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks across test infrastructure, networks, application services, caches, databases, and third-party dependencies, and partner with engineering on remediation
• Evaluate and adopt modern AI-powered tools to accelerate test generation, maintenance, debugging, and coverage
• Improve release confidence through stronger CI/CD integration, test observability, and failu

[…]
ectations for peak usage

• Faster, more confident releases and quality standards engineers respect rather than bypass
• A growing QA function and AI-assisted processes that meaningfully reduce manual effort

WHAT WE OFFER

• Competitive compensation and equity. For applicants in the US, the salary range for this role is $175,000 – $210,000, depending on relevant experience and skill set
• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance, including a medical insurance plan with 100% coverage of employee premiums
• Daily lunch credit through DoorDash in office + free DashPass to use anytime for work or personal use
• Wellhub Membership: 100% company-paid access to premium gym networks (Orangetheory, SoulCycle), 60+ wellness apps (Headspace, MyFitnessPal, Apple Fitness+), and 1:1 coaching sessions spanning fitness, mental health, nutrition, and sleep
• 401(k) matching
• Pet friendly office 🐶

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer

At Kira, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Kira believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees are critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

Background Check

Kira will make a conditional job offer in line with local, state and federal laws, and a subsequent criminal, education, and employment history background check will then be issued.