What are the responsibilities and job description for the QA Engineer (AI-First) position at VacationRenter?
About VacationRenter
VacationRenter is a global travel platform that brings all types of accommodations into one place, making it easy for travelers to find the perfect stay.
From private homes and beachfront villas to city apartments and hotels, VacationRenter offers one of the most extensive selections of properties worldwide and simplifies the entire search experience. Behind the scenes, VacationRenter’s technology analyzes millions of listings and billions of data points to surface the best options for every trip.
Launched out of Wilbur Labs in 2018, VacationRenter quickly became one of the fastest growing travel startups ever, surpassing $1 billion in gross bookings in just two years. The company is led by a team of seasoned travel industry leaders.
About This Role
VacationRenter is seeking a hands-on, AI-driven QA Engineer to build and own the quality function from the ground up. This role is pivotal in ensuring high-confidence releases across our web, mobile, and platform services, while leveraging AI and automation to scale quality without scaling headcount.
You will be the sole QA hire, responsible for designing systems that replace traditional manual QA processes. This is not a conventional QA role. Instead of managing test cases, you will build intelligent, automated systems that generate coverage, identify risks, and improve product quality at speed.
The ideal candidate is a systems thinker with strong engineering instincts who embraces AI-first workflows. You will partner closely with product and engineering to embed quality early in the development lifecycle and ensure that testing, validation, and reliability scale alongside the business. This is a hands-on, code-first role. You will build systems, not write test case spreadsheets.
This role will report directly to the Head of Engineering. This is a full-time hybrid position, based in Dallas.
Role & Responsibilities
- Build and own an AI-powered quality function across web, mobile, and platform services
- Generate test cases from GitHub tickets, UX workflows, and feature requirements using LLMs
- Convert user journeys into automated test scripts across functional, regression, integration, and API layers
- Design and maintain automation frameworks for web (Playwright, Cypress), mobile (Appium, Maestro, Detox), and APIs
- Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) with intelligent test prioritization and gating
- Leverage AI tools (e.g., Cursor, Copilot, Claude) to diagnose failures, triage issues, and implement minor bug fixes
- Contribute code through small PRs to improve UI stability, edge case handling, and test reliability
- Review PRs with a quality-first mindset, ensuring strong test coverage and identifying risk areas
- Partner with Product and Engineering early in the development cycle to define test scenarios and improve feature testability
- Build dashboards and reporting to track coverage, release risk, flaky tests, and critical flow health
- Own mobile QA across iOS and Android, including device fragmentation, release validation, crash monitoring, and edge case testing
- Evaluate and implement tooling such as device farms (BrowserStack, AWS Device Farm) as needed
AI Required Skills & Profile
We believe AI fundamentally changes how QA operates. You will be expected to continuously evaluate new AI tools, build custom workflows such as LLM-based test generation and AI-driven failure triage, and push the boundaries of what one person can accomplish.
Experience with tools such as OpenAI, Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot is expected, but the mindset matters more than any specific tool.
Engineering Capability
- Ability to implement minor bug fixes
- Raise, review, and merge PRs with a strong quality lens
- Comfortable working in codebases, not required to be a full-stack expert
Mindset
- Systems thinker, builds scalable quality systems
- Product-aware, understands user journeys deeply
- Automation-first, minimizes manual QA effort
- High ownership, operates as a quality owner, not just a tester
Minimum Qualifications:
- 3 years of experience in QA, test automation, or software engineering with a strong focus on automation
- Proficiency in at least one modern testing framework (e.g., Playwright, Cypress)
- Experience working with APIs, automation scripts, and CI/CD pipelines
- Strong coding ability, comfortable making minor fixes and contributing PRs
- Experience leveraging AI tools (e.g., OpenAI, Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to improve workflows
- Solid understanding of testing methodologies, including functional, regression, and integration testing
- Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering and product teams
Preferred Qualifications & Prior Experience:
- Experience building or scaling QA systems in a startup or high-growth environment
- Experience with mobile testing frameworks and cross-platform QA (iOS and Android)
- Familiarity with MLOps or AI-driven testing workflows
- Experience building dashboards, observability tools, or quality reporting systems
- Strong product intuition with a deep understanding of user journeys and edge cases
Benefits & Perks:
- Competitive salary equity
- Top-tier laptop provided
- 100% company-paid health benefits for base plan coverage, with the option to upgrade to higher-tier plans
- 401(k) with company match
- Unlimited, guilt-free vacation days
- Annual wellness stipend (gym other wellness activities)
- Monthly house cleaning stipend
- Annual travel allowance
- Monthly cell phone & internet usage stipend
- Charity donation company match
- Employee referral bonus
- Team offsites/activities