Quality Assurance Engineer

Job Details:

The Real Deal is seeking a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer / Release Manager to ensure the stability, performance, and quality of our digital products — including our news site, TRD Data platform, subscription systems, and high-impact advertising units.

You will play a critical role in reducing bugs, preventing regressions, protecting ad revenue, and accelerating our product development velocity. You will collaborate closely with developers, editorial, research, design, and product operations in a fast-moving, Agile environment.

This is a hands-on role ideal for someone who loves testing, problem-solving, and being the last line of defense before production.

Job Responsibilities:

Quality Assurance & Testing

• Design and execute QA plans for new and existing features across web and mobile.
• Perform functional, regression, exploratory, and cross-browser/device testing with a focus on UX/UI consistency and usability.
• Validate ads, subscriptions, paywalls, logins, and core product interactions across TRD products.
• Test data-driven products for accuracy, access control, and user experience.
• Maintain test cases, acceptance criteria, and regression checklists.
• Document clear, reproducible bugs and collaborate with developers to ensure high-quality releases.

Release Management

• Own the full staging → production release pipeline.
• Ensure all tickets have clear requirements before development begins.
• Run structured QA cycles for every sprint and release.
• Create and distribute release notes for internal stakeholders (Editorial, Ads, Subscriptions, Marketing).
• Track post-release defects and coordinate hotfixes when needed.
• Monitor critical functionality immediately after deployments.

Quality Metrics & Continuous Improvement

• Track key QA metrics (e.g., defect rate, regression frequency, release stability).
• Identify recurring issues and partner with devs to eliminate root causes.
• Promote and enforce QA best practices across the digital team.

Cross-Department Collaboration

• Work with Advertising to validate ad rendering, view-ability, and delivery.
• Work with Editorial on template testing, performance, and structured data changes.
• Work with Subscriptions on funnel QA and error diagnosis.
• Work with Product Ops to ensure smooth intake, prioritization, and status updates.

Qualifications:

• 2+ years experience in software QA or release engineering.
• Strong knowledge of QA methodologies, tools, and processes.
• Experience writing detailed test plans, cases, and acceptance criteria.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum development cycles.
• Solid SQL or scripting experience for data validation.
• Ability to design and maintain regression test suites.
• Experience testing across multiple browsers/devices.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with automated testing frameworks (Cypress, Playwright, Selenium, etc.).
• Experience in publishing, media technology, or ad tech.
• Experience testing subscription systems, paywalls, or authentication flows.
• Understanding of SEO-sensitive features (structured data, schema, performance).
• Performance or security testing experience.

Who We Are:

The Real Deal is the largest real-estate news outlet in the US, reaching millions of professionals daily through our media channels. We have received 60+ awards for editorial excellence over the past six years, including the General Excellence award from the Society of Business Writers and Editors.

Quantcast rates us among the 300-most visited sites in the US and the website with the wealthiest audience and one of the most educated.

As a publication, The Real Deal is to real estate what Variety is to entertainment or what Politico is to Beltway politics – a plugged-in news outlet that is read by the entire industry.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We partner with our employees to support diversity and inclusion in the workplace and through higher education programs supporting rising journalists.