Quality Assurance Lead

About the role

Fair Play Labs, a game development studio based in Costa Rica, is looking for a QA Lead to head the quality assurance function across the studio. You will lead QA for multiple projects built in Unreal Engine and Unity 3D, from concept to launch, covering Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series and PC. The internal QA team is the primary frontline of quality for every project.

Key responsibilities

• Define and maintain the QA process, test cycles and milestone-based test plans.
• Set quality gates, define internal acceptance criteria and approve builds before they go to external QA, clients or platform certification.
• Partner with Development Leads, Art Directors, Producers and sometimes clients on delivery timelines and test scopes.
• Work with external QA vendors, defining their scope and auditing their deliverables.
• Manage defects in Jira and test cases in Testmo, including bug triage and severity/priority matrices.
• Prepare and run internal pre-certification checklists before each submission.
• Run and maintain the on-site hardware test lab and its software inventory, and track hardware and software used by remote team members.
• Coordinate the allocation and use of development kits across QA and Development.
• Mentor the internal QA team through regular 1-on-1s and career development paths.
• Deliver weekly reports to Production, metrics dashboards to executives and bi-annual performance evaluations for the department and external partners.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• A recognized QA/testing certification (e.g. ISTQB) or a commitment to obtain one within six months.
• Professional proficiency in English (C1) and Spanish.
• Nice to have: prior QA leadership experience, direct experience with at least one console certification process, and experience testing games in Unreal Engine or Unity with console devkit management.

Required skills

• Hands-on experience with Jira.
• Proven experience with test case management tools.