Senior QA Automation Engineer

About Axle

Axle is building the intelligent infrastructure for how capital moves on Wall Street.

Trillions of dollars in institutional capital get directed through a web of relationships, meetings, and decisions that still run on spreadsheets, email chains, and tools built over a decade ago. This is the layer where markets actually move, and we're at the forefront of rebuilding it.

We have replaced all of it with one platform, powered by AI agents that strip out the manual work and give bankers strategic leverage. Axle is quickly becoming the operating system for Wall Street's most important relationships.

The investment banks already running on Axle treat us as mission-critical, and we are just getting started. The problems we work on are high-stakes, data-dense, and critical to how markets function.

Our founding team blends Wall Street experience with engineering excellence, drawing on backgrounds at firms like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AWS, and Capital One. We lived the problem firsthand and built the platform we wished existed. Our tight-knit team in NYC is backed by top-tier VCs and former leaders from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel.

About the role

We're hiring our first QA Automation Engineer — a foundational role at a critical stage of our growth. You won't just execute test cases handed to you. You'll build our automation framework from the ground up, own test coverage across our platform, and be a key voice in how we ship with confidence.

This is a high-ownership role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, cares deeply about the user experience, and wants to shape how we build and release software.

What you'll do

Build and own automation

• Design and implement our test automation framework from scratch using Playwright and TypeScript — choosing the right patterns and coverage strategy for our stack.
• Write and maintain automated tests across functional, regression, and smoke testing scenarios for our web platform.
• Integrate automated test suites into our CI/CD pipeline so quality gates are fast and reliable.
• Define and maintain test coverage across core user flows, edge cases, and regression scenarios.

Manual testing when it matters

• Perform exploratory and manual testing where automation isn't the right tool — new features, ambiguous specs, or complex UX flows.
• Translate product specs and user stories into structured test plans and test cases.
• Document bugs clearly with repro steps, expected vs. actual behavior, and environment details.
• Partner with engineers to triage, prioritize, and verify fixes.

Own product quality

• Become one of the deepest product experts in the company — understanding the business context behind every feature.
• Identify gaps in quality before customers do.
• Push back on shipping when quality isn't there, and earn trust doing it.

What you bring

• 4+ years of QA or software testing experience, with meaningful time spent in automation.
• Hands-on experience building test automation frameworks from scratch — not just writing tests in an existing setup.
• Proficiency with Playwright and TypeScript; experience with Cypress or Selenium also considered.
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or similar).
• Strong instincts for how things break — you think like an adversarial user.
• Comfortable working across ambiguity — you can make good judgment calls when specs are incomplete.
• Ability to write clear, organized test cases and bug reports without a template to lean on.
• Familiarity with tools like Linear and Notion.

Nice to have

• Experience with API testing tools such as Postman or REST Assured.

Why this role at Axle

You'll be the first QA hire, which means you're not inheriting someone else's automation setup — you're building it. The product is complex, the customers are demanding, and quality actually matters here. If you want real ownership over a function and the technical scope to do it right, this is that.

What to know

We are a startup serving institutions that operate under real pressure, and sometimes that pressure lands on us. There will be times you work long hours or respond outside classic windows because a customer or a deal demands it. We balance a lot at once, and we ask everyone to carry real weight. In exchange, you get outsized ownership, a steep learning curve, and a seat at the center of how markets work. We're in our Flatiron office in New York five days a week because we build faster together.

Benefits & perks

• PTO: Unlimited
• Salary & equity: Competitive compensation with real upside
• Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision — fully covered
• Eats & commute: Lunch and commute stipend, plus office snacks and drinks