Senior Software Quality Assurance Engineer

Ekko | Full-time | Chennai | Reporting to the CTO

Ekko is an AI-powered healthcare product that turns clinical conversations into structured documentation. Our pipeline transcribes audio, generates clinical notes, and extracts structured data using LLMs. We ship across three surfaces — a web app, a backend service, and a browser extension — used by clinicians who depend on accuracy.

We're a small, early-stage team. The person in this role will define how we test, not just execute tests.

We're hiring our first Senior QA Engineer to architect Ekko's quality function from the ground up. You'll own the testing strategy across our three repos, build the automation foundation, and validate that our AI outputs are clinically accurate and consistent — not just that our buttons work.

You'll work directly with our junior QA, mentoring them as you build out the process. You'll also work closely with the engineering and product team to embed quality earlier in our development cycle.

This is a hands-on role. You'll be writing tests in week one, not just designing frameworks.

Architect the QA process from scratch

• Define our testing strategy across unit, integration, E2E, and AI output validation
• Establish standards for test case design, defect triage, release gates, and regression coverage
• Set up CI/CD-integrated test pipelines that catch issues before they ship

Build and own our automation suite

• Write Playwright-based E2E tests across the web app and extension
• Build API test coverage for our backend services
• Set up SQL-based data validation for clinical workflows

Validate AI output quality

• Design evaluation frameworks for our LLM pipeline (transcription accuracy, note quality, extraction correctness)
• Build automated comparisons between AI outputs and ground-truth references (semantic similarity, structured JSON validation, schema compliance)
• Define and track quality metrics that matter for clinical use

Mentor and grow the junior QA

• Pair on test design and automation
• Code review test scripts
• Help them grow from executor to owner

Partner with engineering

• Shift-left: catch issues in design and code review, not in regression
• Run defect triage and RCA
• Be the voice of quality in sprint planning

• 5+ years in QA, with at least 2 years in a senior or lead role
• Strong hands-on automation with Playwright (preferred) or Selenium, in TypeScript or Python
• API and database testing: REST APIs, JSON schema validation, SQL backend checks
• AI/LLM output validation experience — you've tested generative AI outputs and know the difference between passes the test and is actually correct. Familiarity with techniques like semantic similarity, structured output validation, RAGAS, or DeepDiff-style comparison
• Experience defining QA processes from scratch, not just executing within an existing one
• Track record of mentoring junior QAs or owning quality across a small team
• Comfort with a startup pace — ambiguity, ownership, and shipping over perfection

• Healthcare or clinical software experience
• Familiarity with HIPAA, NABH, DPDP, or similar compliance frameworks
• Experience with browser extension testing
• Experience working alongside AI/ML engineers
• CI/CD setup experience (GitHub Actions)

• Real ownership. You're not the 50th QA at a 500-person company. You're defining how Ekko ships quality.
• AI product depth. You'll work on testing problems most QA roles never touch — validating LLM behavior in a clinical setting.
• Direct impact. Small team, fast feedback, decisions made in days not quarters.