Project description

Are you a QA leader who thrives in a high-tech, non-corporate, fast-paced environment who's excited about reshaping what quality engineering looks like in the age of AI? Then we're looking for you!

8vance is a ~50-person strong Dutch-German-Romanian, high-tech, big-data AI company developing the leading talent matching platform using proprietary matching technology to connect people with jobs and organizations with the right talent.

We're looking for a QA Team Lead to take ownership of our software quality. You will be leading a team of experienced testers. A successful candidate is self driven, has excellent team and time management skills and can work in a fast-moving delivery environment. You will help us not only ensure the quality of our releases on a daily bases, but also lead the transformation into an AI-native QA department.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll balance people management with technical direction, and you will be the one steering the shift from traditional test automation toward AI-assisted and agentic testing approaches, while keeping the team's day-to-day delivery sharp, predictable, and fast.

Location: Venlo (NL) or Cluj (RO), with a minimum of 50% office time. If based in Venlo, willingness for regular travel to Cluj is required.

What we are looking for

Leadership & soft skills

• Proven people management and team leadership experience
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; able to build trust quickly across technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong self-reliance and self-organization, with the judgment to prioritize under pressure
• Comfortable making decisions with incomplete information in a fast-moving environment
• Strong team player who works well with varied personalities and disciplines

Technical & QA expertise

• Solid understanding of SDLC processes and QA principles
• Deep knowledge of test levels (Component, Integration, System, Acceptance) and test types (Functional, Non-Functional)
• Hands-on experience with AI native test automation for GUI&API test automation and performance testing
• Working knowledge of Python (or similar) for automation and tooling
• Genuine enthusiasm for and experience with AI applied to testing: you should already be thinking about how AI changes test generation, coverage analysis, and defect triage, not just watching from the sidelines
• Experience with JIRA (or similar) for test planning and reporting
• Understanding of relational databases and object-oriented programming fundamentals
• Agile testing experience

Experience

• 5+ years hands-on experience in functional/software testing, with demonstrated progression into leadership
• Experience testing web-based applications
• Track record of creating and executing test strategies, not just test cases

What we offer

You're joining a dynamic scale-up where you will lead the QA team. You will experience a flat organisational structure where you have high influence on the software and AI architecture and software stack. You'll be working on cutting-edge AI technologies, shape the future of our agentic AI platform, work in an open and forward thinking environment with plenty of opportunities for growth and development.