Manual QA Engineer Overview

About the Product

Alcor is an Employer of Record (EOR) platform that handles payroll processing, contractor management, invoicing, and legal compliance for global distributed teams. The platform processes real money across multiple currencies and jurisdictions — accuracy is non-negotiable.

Tech stack: PHP/Laravel, DDD + CQRS + Event Sourcing, Livewire 3, Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS, Carbon Design System, MariaDB, Redis, Docker, Playwright (E2E), GitHub, Jira, Sentry, LaunchDarkly.

How We Work

Agile / Scrum with 3-week iterations
Refinement is a core ceremony — QA participates actively, challenges ACs, identifies gaps before dev starts
Retrospectives drive real change — we iterate on process, not just product
Velocity tracking with story point estimation — predictability matters
Quality over speed — but we move fast because the market doesn't wait. We achieve both through smart tooling and disciplined process
AI-augmented development — AI has accelerated our delivery by 30%+. We now want to bring the same acceleration to QA. AI experience is a strong advantage; willingness to adopt AI tools is a must
Growth culture — we grow fast, both personally and professionally. You'll expand your skills, take ownership, and level up continuously

What You'll Do

Participate in refinements: ask questions, spot ambiguity, identify untestable ACs before development begins
Write test cases in parallel with development — not after
Test features end-to-end: happy paths, negative cases, edge cases, boundary conditions
Own quality sign-off: your approval means this is release-ready
Verify data integrity through API calls, database queries, and log analysis — not just UI clicking
Collaborate with AQA engineer to identify automation coverage gaps
Document bugs with precision: steps to reproduce, expected vs. actual, severity, environment
Use AI tools to accelerate test case generation, exploratory testing, and regression analysis

What We're Looking For

Destructive thinker — your goal is to break features, not confirm they work
Autonomous — you own your domain; no one tells you what to test or when
Proactive communicator — blockers are raised before development starts; tasks don't move to Done with open questions
Business-oriented — you understand why a feature exists, not just what buttons to click
Accountable — sign-off is a personal quality guarantee

Experience

3-5 years in QA
Proven track record of finding business logic bugs, not just UI cosmetic issues
Experience working in Agile/Scrum teams with active QA participation in refinement
Familiarity with event-driven or async architectures (eventual consistency, queue-based processing)
Experience testing financial/payroll/HR SaaS products is a strong plus

Technical Skills

Browser DevTools - Network tab, Console, Application storage — daily usage
API testing - Postman, cURL, or similar — verify backend behavior independently of UI
SQL - Write queries to verify data state, check projections, validate calculations
Git & GitHub - Read PRs, understand diffs, leave QA feedback in code review
Jira - Structured workflow management, linked tickets, clear bug reports
CI/CD awareness - Understand pipeline stages, feature branch environments
Docker basics - Run local environment, read container logs
AI tools - ChatGPT/Copilot/Claude for test case generation, exploratory testing ideas, log analysis

Nice to Have

Experience with Livewire or server-rendered reactive UIs
Familiarity with Playwright — ability to read E2E specs and suggest coverage
Understanding of DDD / Event Sourcing concepts (aggregates, projections, event replay)
Experience with feature flag testing (LaunchDarkly or similar)
Testing PDF/Excel exports (payslips, invoices, reports)
Experience with Shadow DOM / web components

Domain Knowledge You'll Build

Payroll lifecycle: draft generated approved paid
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Manual QA Engineer at Alcor