Head of QA

Hi I’m Abhik, Ashby’s Co-Founder and VP of Engineering. Ashby builds software that enables talent teams to run an efficient and delightful hiring process. Our software simplifies and automates complex workflows (like scheduling a candidate) and bundles what are traditionally different software tools into one.

As a result, our software is comprehensive and deep. It covers the feature set of at least four other products. It models the complexity of hiring at the scale of thousands of employees while deeply integrating with other systems like email and calendar. We accomplish much of this by creating reusable building blocks (e.g., a form builder for surveys and application forms) to provide a powerful feature set out-of-the-box while being familiar and easy to use.

Our approach presents some exciting challenges in QA-ing our software. First, it requires a deep understanding of recruiting to empower the creation of QA plans that cover use cases across our wide array of features and the seams between them. Second, it requires QA to be product experts to understand how a change (particularly to a building block) can propagate through our features to identify edge cases.

You will lead our QA team of three QA analysts to help us meet our unique challenges. You will set the larger vision on how QA evolves to reduce regressions while maintaining a high shipping velocity as the product, team, customer base, and customer size grow. Our team has already adopted QA tools (TestRail, Testim) and established some processes and metrics, so you’ll inherit a reasonably mature team for its size (versus starting from scratch).

This role will report to me and work closely with our Director of Engineering in EMEA, Colin. He has a passion for QA and will lead our testing strategy in Engineering. Together, you’ll set an industry-leading standard for software quality.

Requirements

I’m looking for someone exacting who manages their team with both empathy and rigor. While we’re open to folks with different levels of experience (hence the wide compensation range), we have some minimum requirements:

• You work remotely in the US or Canada. We prefer folks who can overlap with EMEA time zones, as we will add QA team members in EMEA to support our growing EMEA Engineering team.
• You’ve managed a team of at least two QA analysts or engineers. We want someone with great management instincts that have already been tested.
• You’ve set a performance standard (e.g., levels, individual and team metrics). This means you've documented a standard, measured that standard, and held your team accountable.
• You’ve been integral to capacity planning for a QA team. Our QA team needs to grow, and you’ll need to put together an argument about when and where.
• You’ve evaluated and implemented software that improves or automates QA processes.
• You’ve led QA process changes as an IC or manager with successful outcomes.
  
  

Why You Shouldn’t Apply

• You are not interested in rolling up your sleeves and helping the team QA. We run a lean team across all departments, and in yours, there will be times when demand for QA outpaces capacity. We also like folks who want to stay close to the work to evaluate methods and processes by doing it occasionally.
• You don’t stay up-to-date on tools and processes for QA. QA is evolving, especially with improvements in machine learning models and their ability to perform monotonous tasks faster and more accurately than humans. I don’t think QA will be an exception, and staying up-to-date on the state of the art is essential.
• You don’t believe management needs to be in the details. We believe managers need to monitor their team's work to evaluate and raise their team’s performance. For instance, your performance reviews are often filled with details and samples of work to prove areas of excellence or improvement.
• You don’t believe evaluating QA quality and capacity can be driven by analysis and metrics. We need you to be able to measure and forecast demand and capacity to grow the team deliberately.
  
  

Interview Process

At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past work and simulate working together.

Our interview process is six rounds in the following order:

• Recruiter Intro Call - 30m
• Hiring Manager Intro Call - 30m: You and I will chat about your application questions and answer any questions you have about the role.
• Technical Screen - 30m: We’ll send over documentation for a small feature in Ashby and talk live about how you’d approach building a QA plan.
• Leadership Screen - 60m: You and I will talk through your past experiences managing a team.
• Technical Take Home - 3h 30m: As a take-home, you build a QA plan for a feature in Ashby and discuss it live with three members of our team.
• Meet the Team - 2h 45m: You meet folks on the QA and Engineering teams. The sessions are primarily behavioral questions, with one session presenting a product you’ve worked on in the past to help us understand the depth of your product knowledge.
  
  

At each round, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions of the team. After the recruiter screen, I will be your main point of contact and prepare you for interviews. If we don’t give an offer, we’ll provide feedback!

About Ashby

Ashby was founded in 2018, publicly launched in 2022, and has raised $70M in funding. We have many customers (e.g., OpenAI, Shopify), great revenue growth, years of runway, and amazing investors like YCombinator, Elad Gil, and Lachy Groom. I’ll share more once we meet.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.
• Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year.
• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
• If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.
  
  

Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.

Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.

Compensation Range: $150K - $210K