About the role

ContactVerse is building a multi-service AI platform at pace, and quality needs an owner before scale makes it expensive. This role exists to set the standard, build the automation behind it, and then hand it to the engineers so that quality is something the team owns rather than something a department catches.

What you will do

• Own the test strategy. What is automated, what is manual, what runs on every commit and what blocks a release.
• Own the definition of done. Agreed with engineering and product, and enforced at review rather than discovered at release.
• Build the regression suite. Across Core and the industry verticals, so that a change in one place cannot quietly break another.
• Own the reconciliation. Between what the plan says is built and what the code contains. Keeping those in agreement is a quality signal, not an administrative one.
• Own release readiness. A clear, evidenced answer to whether this release is safe, including for migrations.
• Test the AI layer specifically. Model behaviour is probabilistic; regression means something different and needs evaluation rather than assertion.
• Build quality into the pipeline. Checks that run automatically, so the standard does not depend on anyone remembering.
• Coach rather than police. The goal is engineers who catch their own defects, not a queue waiting for your sign-off.
• Track and report defect data. Where defects originate, how long they survive, and what that says about the process.

Your first year

First 90 days. A definition of done agreed, and a clear picture of where coverage is thin.

By six months. Regression suites running on every release, and claimed status reconciled with the code as a matter of routine.

By twelve months. Quality owned by the engineers, with you setting the standard rather than catching the failures.

What you will bring

• Eight years or more in quality or test engineering, including a leadership role.
• Has introduced a quality gate into a team that did not have one, without becoming the bottleneck.
• Strong test automation for APIs and services, in Python or similar.
• Has built regression coverage for a multi-service system.
• Comfortable testing a system where part of the behaviour is probabilistic.
• Has worked alongside engineers rather than in a separate function reporting defects over a wall.
• Data-literate about defects: where they come from and what that means.
• Available for a working overlap into the evening IST.

Nice to have

• Experience testing LLM or AI-driven features, including evaluation harnesses.
• Performance and load testing.
• CI/CD pipeline engineering.
• Contact-centre or voice platforms, where testing involves audio and timing.
• Has run quality for a team of contractors.

What you will work with

Python and FastAPI services on AWS, GitHub Actions on self-hosted runners, pytest, Alembic migrations, and a documentation site that reconciles the requirement against the code and is itself a useful quality signal.

What this role is not

Not a manual test team. If this role becomes the bottleneck it has failed.

How we work

The team works to a UK-aligned pattern, with the main working overlap in the evening IST. These hours are indicative and may change as the business changes; any change would be discussed rather than imposed. Development happens on company-provided remote machines. Everything is remote and nobody is in an office.

We are a small company and we write things down. Decisions are recorded, corrections are made to the source rather than to the output, and status is expected to be honest even when it is unwelcome.

Compensation and what we offer

• A long-term incentive, discussed at offer stage for senior appointments.
• Fully remote working, with company-provided equipment where the role requires it.
• A role with unusual scope for its level, because the organisation is being built rather than joined.
• Direct access to the founders. There are no layers between this role and the people making the decisions.

How we will assess you

We assess against three or four weighted signals agreed before we read a single CV, rather than against years of experience or a list of tools. Expect four stages:

• Introductory conversation with our People team. About 30 minutes, covering the role, your background and what you are looking for. This first conversation may be with an AI assistant; you will be told at the time and may ask to speak to a person instead.
• Conversation with the hiring manager. About 60 minutes, going deep on what you have done and how you think.
• A working session on a real ContactVerse problem. About 90 minutes. Not a whiteboard exercise and not a take-home test you do unpaid in your evenings.
• Final conversation with the founders. Covering fit, expectations and how we would work together.

We aim to complete the process within three weeks and to give you a decision, with reasons, within three working days of the final stage.

Equal opportunity

ContactVerse is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications regardless of age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We select against the published signals for the role and nothing else. If you need an adjustment at any stage of the process, tell us and we will make it. It will not count against you.

Research consistently shows that some candidates apply only when they meet every criterion. If this role interests you and you meet most of what is listed, please apply.

How to apply

Write to career@contactverse.ai quoting reference POS-015, with your CV and a short note (a few paragraphs is plenty) on the part of this role you would most want to get your hands on, and why.