About the Position

Manual QA Engineer

Manual QA Engineer Overview

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.

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

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

We Offer

A team that values quality and gives QA a real voice in the process
Direct impact on a product handling real payroll for real people
AI-augmented workflow - you'll be among the first QA professionals to deeply integrate AI into the testing lifecycle
Fast professional growth - expand into automation, domain expertise, or process leadership
No micromanagement - ownership and trust from day one

Manual QA Engineer

Job Description, Responsibilities & Requirements