12 weeks
HELM
Hospitality
A Replit build with real bookings and no tests. We rebuilt auth and payments and replaced three conflicting dashboards with one. Production-ready in 12 weeks, built to support 2,000+ providers.
Read the HELM case study →HIRE · QA ENGINEER (TEST AUTOMATION)
Hire a senior QA automation engineer and stop clicking through every release.
End-to-end tests on the flows that make you money, running on every pull request. AI drafts the tests, a senior reviews them. From $3,375 a month.
Contributing in 15 days · NDAs are standard
15 days
From kickoff to merged contributions
$3,375
Retainers from, per month, for 150 hours
Every merge
Reviewed by a senior engineer
Day 1
Your repo, your cloud, your IP
WHAT YOU GET
What a QA automation engineer builds for you.
01
Picks what to test first
A ranked list of the flows where a bug costs you money or users, and tests for those first.
02
Writes end-to-end tests
Real user journeys through the browser or the app, from sign-up to payment.
03
Adds API and integration tests
Checks that your backend, payments and third-party services agree with each other.
04
Treats a flaky test as a bug
Every unreliable test gets fixed or deleted, so a red build always means something.
05
Wires tests into CI
Fast checks on every pull request, the full suite before each release.
06
Reports what's covered
A plain list of which flows are protected and which aren't yet.
SKILLS & STACK
What your automation engineer works with.
- End-to-end
- PlaywrightCypress for web apps
- Mobile
- DetoxMaestro for React Native apps
- API & integration
- Tests for Node.js / NestJS and PHP/Laravel backendspayments and webhooks
- Unit
- Alongside your engineers, in the framework your codebase already uses
- CI/CD
- GitHub ActionsGitLab CICloud Builddeploying to your AWS or Google Cloud account
- AI features
- Eval sets and pass thresholds for LLM features before release
- Performance
- Load tests on key flows with k6 before launches. Deeper performance work scoped separately
HOW AI MAKES THIS ROLE FASTER
AI writes the tests fast. Your engineer decides which ones you can trust.
Test code is some of the most repetitive code there is, which makes it a good fit for AI drafting. The risk is a suite full of tests that pass without checking anything. That's what the review gate is for.
| Step | What AI does | What the engineer does | Gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft | Generates test cases and test code from the flow and the ticket | Removes tests that assert nothing; adds the edge cases that matter | Senior review before merge |
| Data | Builds fixtures and test data for each scenario | Checks the data matches real-world cases, never real customer data | Review |
| Repair | Proposes fixes when a UI change breaks selectors | Confirms the test still checks the same behaviour | CI must pass twice in a row |
| Triage | Summarises a failed run and points at the likely cause | Decides if it's a product bug or a test bug | Bug filed or test fixed within 1 business day |
AI writes a significant share of the code, tests included. A senior engineer reviews every line before merge. CodeRabbit found AI-co-authored pull requests carried ~1.7× more major issues, which is why AI-written tests get the same review as product code. Client code is never used to train models.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
Three ways to bring a QA automation engineer onto your product.
Recommended
Continuous Delivery Retainer
from $3,375/month · 150 hours
150 hours a month of your QA automation engineer on a backlog we agree with you, with senior review on every merge. The price depends on the role and is confirmed on a 30-minute call.
See the retainer →Prepaid Hours
$45/hour · 20-hour minimum
Buy 20 to 120 hours for scoped work, valid for 12 months. Bigger blocks cost less per hour. Need more than 120? The retainer fits better.
See hour blocks →Embedded team
lead + 1 engineer from $8,000/month
A tech lead plus your QA automation engineer inside your repo, your Slack and your sprint rituals. Bigger teams are quoted to fit.
See embedded teams →Teams with no tests often start with prepaid hours to cover their top five flows, then keep the suite running on a retainer.
HIRING VS. SOCIILABS
What changes when you skip the hiring search?
| Hiring your own | Working with SociiLabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first contribution | A search, interviews, notice period, then onboarding | Contributing in 15 days |
| If it doesn't work out | 46% of new hires fail within 18 months (Leadership IQ) | We replace the engineer, handover time isn't billed, and you keep the code and history |
| Who reviews the code | Whoever you already have | A senior engineer, on every merge |
| How AI is used | Depends on the person | AI in the loop on every task, behind a review gate |
| Commitment | Salary, benefits, equity | Monthly retainer or a block of hours |
PROOF
Products that had to stop breaking.
0 crashes in 6 months
ZapBook
Booking SaaS
Weekly crashes on a single server became zero crashes in six months, with zero-downtime deploys and 12+ reporting verticals verified. Delivered by an embedded team of 4 over a 12-month engagement.
Read the ZapBook case study →FAQ
Questions about hiring a QA automation engineer.
AI drafts tests quickly, and we use it for that. Deciding what's worth testing, removing tests that check nothing and keeping the suite reliable still takes an engineer, and every AI-written test gets a senior review before merge.