Quality assurance (QA) contractor

Role details

• Rate: $45 – $60 per hour
• Hours: Average of 15 hours per week
• Contract duration: September 8, 2026, through December 18, 2026
• Location: Remote (U.S. Only)
• Expected contract total: $10,125.00 – $13,500.00
• Application deadline: August 31, 2026, at 12:00 p.m. CT
• Department: Product & Technology
• Reports to: Alexandra Smith, Chief Strategy Officer

Scope of work

The 19th is seeking a part-time quality assurance (QA) contractor to support our Product and Technology team by doing manual testing and building automated test coverage.

The contractor will build out test plans, develop test cases, document bugs, manually execute QA testing and create systems to improve our QA process. They will also be responsible for designing, building and maintaining automated testing frameworks as needed to reduce manual testing load.

The 19th uses a mix of third-party and homegrown technologies, including a custom WordPress website and content management system; servers and infrastructure managed by WordPress VIP; Virtuous CRM; Fundraise Up; MailChimp ESP; various integration and project management tools; and standalone full stack applications to gather and analyze internal business data.

Deliverables include:

• Execute manual testing across all our products (web, mobile, aggregation applications, and internal tools)
• Create and maintain test plans, test cases and test content (e.g., sample articles) across all our products
• Identify, document and track bugs while providing input on prioritization and urgency
• Verify bug fixes and perform regression testing before releases
• Maintain clear, up-to-date documentation of testing coverage and known issues
• Design, develop and maintain automated test suites (UI, API, integration and/or end-to-end)
• Integrate automated tests into continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines
• Build and maintain test frameworks and internal tools to improve testing efficiency
• Identify gaps in automated coverage and work with product managers to prioritize what to automate
• Monitor and report on test coverage, quality metrics and release readiness
• Collaborate with our designer to execute front-end testing and user acceptance testing (UAT)
• Create test content (e.g., sample articles) to support QA of CMS and publishing workflows
• Test for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance and accessibility acceptance criteria
• Collaborate with developers and product managers to clarify requirements and acceptance criteria

Skills required

• 2+ years of experience in manual QA testing (web and/or mobile applications)
• Strong understanding of the software testing lifecycle
• Experience writing clear, detailed test cases and bug reports
• Familiarity with bug tracking tools (e.g., Jira, Linear)
• Familiarity with testing tools (e.g., BrowserStack)
• Ability to read and understand product requirements/specs
• Strong attention to detail and pattern recognition for edge cases
• Good written communication skills
• Experience with WCAG accessibility guidelines and screen reader software (e.g., VoiceOver, NVDA)
• 1+ years of experience in test automation, QA engineering
• Solid programming skills in at least one language commonly used for test automation (JavaScript/TypeScript, PHP, Python)
• Proven experience building automated test frameworks (e.g., Playwright, PHPUnit, Jest)
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (e.g., GitHub Actions, Docker, CircleCI)
• Experience with version control (Git)

We know there are great candidates who might not check all these boxes or who possess important skills we haven’t thought of. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself. We also encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities.

How to apply

Interested candidates should apply here by August 31, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. CT. Have questions about this position? Contact us at jobs@19thnews.org. (Note: We are not accepting résumés or applications via email; apply here)