Mid-Level QA Engineer

About the Role

Requirements

• About You
• This role is for someone who takes ownership seriously, communicates clearly, and wants to grow from QA into full stack engineering over time.
• You will bring:
• 4+ years experience in manual testing, with confidence using test management/automation tooling (e.g. Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Postman or similar).
• Comfort writing automated tests, or a keenness to build that skill quickly.
• Practical, hands-on use of AI tools (Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) to speed up both testing and development work.
• Able to run a release testing cycle end-to-end with minimal guidance, without needing to operate at a senior or lead level.
• Strong communication skills, comfortable being the last checkpoint before release and giving clear, direct feedback to engineers.
• A genuine interest in eventually spending more time on the engineering side.
• Highly regarded:
• Some full stack development experience - strong QA candidates who've dabbled in code and want to grow into it are welcome to apply.
• Experience testing complex, data-heavy or scheduling/timetabling-style domains.
• Exposure to GraphQL APIs and Postgres.
• Experience in a CI/CD environment (Gitlab CI, or similar).

Benefits

• Why Join Compass
• You'll join a small, high-trust engineering team building a genuinely complex, high-stakes product, with real ownership over the release process, a clear pathway into full stack development, and visible impact on thousands of schools every day.
• What we offer:
• A hybrid working environment, based out of our Melbourne office hub.
• Learning and development opportunities, including a dedicated PD budget.
• 24/7 access to our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), including face-to-face, phone and live chat support.
• A parental leave program for both primary and secondary carers.
• Regular team events, social budgets and in-office perks help you stay connected, from team lunches to end-of-week socials.
• Employee Referral Program
• A supportive, inclusive culture where your voice is valued and heard.
• Compass is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We embrace and celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
• Prior to commencing employment, you’ll need:
• A valid Employee Working With Children Check
• A satisfactory National Police Check
• Verification of unrestricted work rights in Australia (e.g. citizenship, passport or birth certificate)
• Ready to Apply?
• Find out more about Compass on our website - www.compass.education.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of manual testing for tickets moving through the test environment, and approve them for engineers to progress.
• Run final, pre-release regression and sign-off testing across the platform.
• Write automated tests (UI, API) to reduce manual testing load over time and build a more reliable release safety net.
• Use AI tools to accelerate test case design, test data generation and automation scripting.
• Flag risk areas and edge cases early, working closely with engineers rather than testing in isolation at the end.
• Pick up feature and bug tickets across the stack, working with engineers on real delivery work.
• Use AI tools to drive feature development - from scaffolding to implementation to testing your own changes.
• Grow exposure to backend (Spring Boot / PostgreSQL / GraphQL) and frontend work over time.