Quality Assurance Engineer

About PublicInput

PublicInput develops and supports Software-as-a-Service (Saas) solutions designed for government agencies and their consultant partners to facilitate and manage better communication with the public.

Based in Raleigh, NC, the company was founded with a vision to access and elevate historically underrepresented communities in the municipal and state planning process, while simultaneously streamlining cumbersome administrative work that so often prevents equitable outcomes.

With a shared background in planning consulting, the company’s co-founders believe that technology can play a key role in making government more responsive and representative of communities' broadest needs.

Our Approach

Many engagement solutions only address small parts of the engagement process, offering a piecemeal approach that relies on third-party partnerships to fill in the gaps.

PublicInput uses a unified approach, blending traditional and virtual engagement tactics via one integrated platform.

Reliable, equitable, and simple, our easy-to-use user interface gives governments all the tools needed to facilitate successful public engagement.

Our Culture

PublicInput is driven by the idea that “life is all about the people you meet and the things you create with them.” We are privileged to work with exceptionally talented colleagues to create a meaningful change for governments and society.

PublicInput’s mission is to enable collaborative democracy through technology. This means creating systems that allow governments to build relationships with their community through more reliable communication, lowered barriers to participation, and data analytics to understand what they’re hearing.

That is why we work hard to be the experienced and empathetic innovation partner that state and local governments deserve, while building an exceptional team and company.

About The Role & You:

The Quality Assurance Engineer is the bridge between our developers and the public agencies who rely on our platform every day. You safeguard the customer experience by anticipating how a system can break — catching glitches, regressions, security gaps, and usability issues before they ever reach a resident filling out a survey or a planner running a public meeting.

In this role, you'll partner closely with engineers, product managers, and customer-facing teams to design test strategies, execute manual and automated tests, and sign off on sprint work. You'll develop a deep understanding of how design and implementation decisions impact scalability, reliability, accessibility, and the overall customer experience.

Software engineering — and QA along with it — is changing rapidly with AI. Our team has embraced this technology to improve velocity, expand test coverage, and produce more readable, well-documented test suites. We expect any candidate to have a solid understanding of AI-assisted engineering and testing tools, and experience applying them as a force multiplier.

What You Will Do:

Design and Execute Tests

Develop and execute comprehensive testing strategies across web and mobile experiences by creating clear, step-by-step test cases that validate features and functionality. Perform manual testing to evaluate the software from an end-user perspective, identifying usability concerns, edge cases, and unexpected defects. Build and maintain automated tests using programming languages and testing frameworks to improve efficiency, accelerate development cycles, and expand test coverage. Conduct regression testing to ensure new updates do not negatively impact existing functionality, with a focus on critical user flows and system integrations. Additionally, integrate automated test suites into Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines so tests run consistently on builds and pull requests, enabling rapid feedback and supporting high-quality releases.

Own Product Quality

Collaborate closely with engineers and product managers throughout the sprint cycle to validate user stories, identify and communicate blocking issues early, and provide clear quality sign-off prior to release. Investigate and document software defects by capturing detailed reproduction steps, expected versus actual behavior, environments, and supporting evidence such as screenshots or logs to enable efficient resolution by the development team. Additionally, contribute to larger customer initiatives by developing test strategies, test cases, and supporting quality resources that ensure testing coverage appropriately scales with project complexity, business impact, and risk.

Deliver Value with Broader Impact

Partner with stakeholders — including product managers, designers, engineers, and support — to understand customer and business requirements. Contribute insights from testing to influence product decisions, improve reliability and observability, and continuously raise the bar on quality across the platform.

Skills and Experience:

Professional Qualifications

• ASP.NET MVC, .NET, C#, MSSQL, React, Javascript, jQuery, HTML/CSS, Azure, DevOps. Leverage AI as a productivity multiplier to solve business problems and improve internal processes.
• Hands-on experience with testing frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright(preferred), or Appium.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language commonly used for automated testing — Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Experience with bug tracking and project management tools such as Jira or Azure DevOps(preferred).
• Solid understanding of QA methodologies: test planning, test case design, exploratory testing, regression testing, and release sign-off processes.
• Familiarity with web technologies (HTML/CSS, REST APIs, browser dev tools) and the ability to read and understand application code (ideally ASP.NET/C#, JavaScript/TypeScript/React) to triage issues and collaborate effectively with engineers.
• Comfort writing SQL queries (MSSQL preferred) to validate data and reproduce issues.
• Experience leveraging AI tools as a productivity multiplier — for generating test cases, drafting automation, and improving coverage.

Personal Qualifications

• Attention to Detail: A critical mindset focused on anticipating how a system can break and a willingness to dig until you understand the root cause.
• Strong Ownership: Takes responsibility for the quality of what ships, and is comfortable being the person who says "not yet" when something isn't ready.
• Proactive Communicator: Ensures alignment across engineers, product, and stakeholders; writes clear, reproducible bug reports and well-organized test documentation.
• Customer Empathy: Thinks like the end user — whether that's a city planner, an agency administrator, or a resident participating in their first public meeting.
• Curious and Forward-Looking: Consistently seeks ways to improve testing practices, expand automation coverage, and adopt new tools and techniques.

Compensation

This role pays a market-competitive base salary and is eligible to participate in the company’s annual bonus plan.

You may also be eligible for our equity incentive program that awards high-performing employees on an annual basis. These option grants are awarded at the CEO’s discretion to acknowledge employees who have made significant contributions to achieving our goals.

Benefits

• Unlimited Paid Time Off: You know yourself best, so we trust you to take the time you need to maintain a rewarding work/life balance.
• Group Health, Dental, and Vision Plan: PublicInput offers a company-subsidized healthcare plan that covers 100% of your medical premiums or up to $800 per month for you and your dependents. We also have options to add Dental, Vision, Life, and other benefit coverages for the employee and their family.
• $1,000 HSA Contribution: PublicInput will contribute $1,000 annually (spread over each month) to an employee’s Health Savings Account (HSA).
• Pre-tax 401 (k): The company provides access to make pre-tax contributions to a 401 (k) plan, and will match 50 cents on the dollar up to 6% of an employee’s base salary.

Company Culture

Our offices are based out of Raleigh Founded in the Glenwood South neighborhood of Downtown Raleigh. We’re fortunate to be surrounded by fellow social entrepreneurs and high-growth companies. Glenwood South contains a multitude of restaurants, bars, unique shops and art galleries.

The Legal Bits

PublicInput is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or other characteristics protected by law.

As a condition of employment, you are required to sign and comply with an Employee Confidential Information Invention Assignment Agreement that requires, among other provisions, the assignment of rights to any invention made during your employment at the Company, and non-disclosure of Company proprietary information.

All company offers are contingent upon the completion of a criminal background check. Your employment is at-will and either you or we may terminate your employment at any time, with or without notice.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

PublicInput celebrates all people and is committed to working actively towards equity and accessibility for everyone.

We believe society is strongest when everyone is listened to, respected, valued, and able to contribute to the decision-making process, regardless of race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, religious faith, disability status, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

We seek talented individuals whose skills and experiences can help us transform the way government and communities work together.

We are committed to a nondiscriminatory approach and provide equal opportunity for employment and advancement in all areas of our company.