QA Lead

About CES

Accelerating the transition to a circular economy

We are proud to be an active contributor in the circular economy through container deposit schemes (10c refund for eligible drink containers). We help our scheme partners to recycle close to 10 million drink containers every day, diverting them from landfill into the circular economy.

Our technology and services enable the circular lifecycle of drink containers. We have a large in-house software engineering team using modern technology stacks to develop and support our products. As well as a suite of SaaS products, our range of business services includes accounting, payments, brand & marketing, materials trading, HR, customer service and support.

CES was formed in 2017 as a joint venture between Lion and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and has grown rapidly. We are headquartered in North Sydney, near public transport with beautiful harbour views. Our teams are passionate about our mission to ensure valuable materials are recycled and not wasted. We provide an inclusive culture, hybrid and flexible working and career development to bring the best out in our people.

Originally known as Container Exchange Services, we have rebranded to Circular Economy Systems to recognise our vision to be leaders in the transition to a circular economy.

About the role

We're looking for a QA Lead who is not only capable of setting quality standards but is also eager to roll up their sleeves and lead from the front. This role will be directly involved in designing and executing test strategies, writing automation scripts, and ensuring the delivery of high-quality applications across both legacy and modern technology stacks. You’ll work closely with internal developers and further down the track external vendor teams, serving as the key quality gatekeeper for everything we build and maintain.

Key Deliverables

• Take a hands-on lead role in the design, development, and execution of test plans, test cases, and automated test scripts.

• Establish quality standards and processes across the engineering team, defining best practices for testing approaches, automation standards, and quality gates.

• Drive quality strategy and continuous improvement by implementing quality metrics, identifying process improvements, and acting as the quality advocate.

• Lead vendor quality management by establishing testing standards and processes for future external development partners.

• Mentor the QA team and foster knowledge sharing across the broader engineering organisation to build quality awareness and capabilities.

• Build and maintain test automation frameworks across frontend and backend systems using tools such as Cypress, Playwright, Postman, or similar.

• Manage day-to-day QA activities across internal teams and in the future external vendors, ensuring alignment with quality goals and standards.

• Collaborate with Software Developers, Associate Product Managers and Product Designers during the software delivery lifecycle to identify test requirements early in the process.

• Review technical designs and user stories to identify and mitigate potential quality issues.

• Own defect management and reporting, including triaging issues, tracking root causes, and verifying fixes.

• Implement and maintain integration and regression testing pipelines as part of CI/CD workflows.

• Contribute to performance and security testing strategies for key systems.

• Continuously learn and apply new technologies relevant to your work, contributing to a culture of innovation, technical growth and continuous improvement.

About you

• 6+ years of QA or software testing experience, with at least 2 years in a lead role.

• Strong demonstrated experience of modern test automation frameworks and practices (e.g. BDD, TDD, Cucumber, Gherkin, Junit etc).

• Proficiency in testing both frontend frameworks (React, Angular, Next.js) and backend systems (Java, Node.js).

• Experience working with containerized applications (e.g., Kubernetes) and event-driven systems.

• Familiarity with cloud environments like AWS and Oracle Cloud, exposure to Microsoft Azure is a plus.

• Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Azure DevOps, or GitHub Actions.

• Familiar with issue tracking and agile planning tools such as JIRA.

• Comfortable writing scripts or automation in JavaScript/TypeScript and basic command-line tools.

• Experience working in Agile development teams, with a strong understanding of the software development lifecycle and QA processes.

• Excellent attention to detail, problem-solving skills, and communication abilities.

• ISTQB or similar certification is an advantage.

Our Values

• Scheme success is our success:
  Our mission is to accelerate recycling rates. We make decisions in the best interest of all schemes to maximise our impact for individuals, community, and the environment.

• Win as a Team:
  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Great things are achieved in teams that combine the right expertise and leadership.

• Make a Difference:
  Take initiative, take ownership. Openly communicate the outcome you want and go make it happen!

• Be Engaged:
  Reflect your passion in your work, no matter the task or challenge. Your engagement is a source of inspiration to your peers.

• Do the Right Thing:
  Do the right thing by others and the company, and the rest will follow. Seek win-win outcomes, listen, act inclusively, and always aim for better.