QA Engineer / Test Lead — Multimodal AI Platform - Freelance

Location: Fully remote (Canada) Duration: Milestone-based freelance contract Hours: Independent contractor engagement Overview An organization working with very large volumes of imagery, video, and audio is building a next-generation platform to help its experts make sense of it all. The platform is a modular, multimodal AI system that performs first-pass analysis automatically — computer vision on imagery and video, speech-to-text on audio, and language models for summarization and metadata — then hands its findings to human experts who review, correct, and approve before anything is finalized. This is a software architecture, integration, data-engineering, application, and secure-deployment effort that assembles best-in-class existing AI services into one robust production platform. You'll own quality for this modular, multimodal AI platform that turns imagery, video, and audio into structured, human-validated output. You define the test strategy, execute across every layer of the system, and produce the acceptance evidence that gets it signed off. This is a test-lead role with real breadth: functional and API testing, verifying the AI-plus-human review workflow, accessibility, performance at scale, and automated regression — plus the judgment to chase down issues wherever they surface across a distributed delivery team. Key Responsibilities Define the test strategy and test plan, with traceability from each requirement to the test cases and evidence that prove it has been met Design and execute functional, integration, end-to-end, and REST API tests across ingestion, AI-workflow orchestration, storage and retrieval, and the operator, administrator, and search applications Verify the human-in-the-loop behavior — operator review, modify, approve and reject paths, workflow status and confidence display, and swapping one AI service for another without breaking the workflow Run WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility verification (automated tooling plus manual keyboard and screen-reader testing) Support performance and scalability testing against capacity and search-volume targets Build and maintain automated regression coverage in CI/CD Manage defects end to end — triage, ownership, and verified resolution Produce the final test summary and acceptance-evidence package Required Qualifications 5+ years in software quality assurance / test engineering, including ownership of a test program on at least one delivered system Functional, integration, end-to-end, and REST API testing on production-bound systems, with requirement-to-test-case traceability Test automation with an established framework (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or pytest) integrated into CI/CD API and performance/load tooling experience (e.g., JMeter or k6) Accessibility verification against WCAG 2.1 Level AA using both automated tooling and manual keyboard and screen-reader testing Strong scripting/programming ability for test automation Demonstrable track record on comparable systems (portfolio, case studies, or references) Preferred Qualifications Experience testing systems that present machine-generated output for human review (confidence, provenance, and correction workflows) Experience testing media-intensive or data-intensive systems Experience testing software for government or regulated industries Familiarity with containerized environments and CI/CD pipelines Experience delivering complex software systems for government or regulated industries Work Location & Requirements Fully remote position Must be based in Canada and able to contract as an independent professional Freelance / independent contractor engagement (not employment) Selection process includes a review of background and past work, followed by a short technical assessment / exercise

The role involves defining and executing a comprehensive test strategy for a multimodal AI platform, covering functional, API, and accessibility testing. The lead will manage the end-to-end quality process, from requirement traceability to producing final acceptance evidence.

Candidates must have over 5 years of QA experience with a proven track record in test automation frameworks and API testing. Proficiency in WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility verification and the ability to work as an independent contractor in Canada are required.

• CI/CDPreferred

Identified from the job description. Confirm important requirements above.

• Test Strategy
• Functional Testing
• Integration Testing
• End-to-End Testing
• REST API Testing
• Playwright
• Cypress
• Selenium
• Pytest
• JMeter
• k6
• WCAG 2.1 AA
• CI/CD
• Performance Testing
• Defect Management
• Scripting

• Software
• Technology
• Engineering
• Data & Analytics
• Government & Public Sector

Minimum experience

5+ years

Posting language

English

Working hours

40 hours per week

Seniority

Mid-Senior level