Lead QA Tester (Indie PC/Console Games)

TL;DR

Lead QA Tester (Indie PC/Console Games): Own and evolve quality practices across indie game portfolio, managing internal QA team and external partners to deliver polished, stable releases with an accent on scalable testing strategies and player experience. Focus on defining studio-wide QA vision, test planning, defect management, and cross-functional collaboration in agile workflows.

Location: Based in Tokyo

Company

Indie game studio building PC and console games that connect players worldwide through art, technology, and storytelling.

What you will do

• Manage day-to-day QA team workload, assign tasks, and track requests from other departments.
• Define and implement studio-wide QA vision, standards, workflows, and scalable testing strategies aligned with production milestones.
• Create test plans, test cases, regression suites; oversee functional, regression, compatibility, performance, and compliance testing.
• Coordinate with Production for realistic QA timelines in sprint planning and external QA vendors for additional capacity.
• Support live updates, post-launch patches, shift-left testing, and risk-based testing approaches.
• Promote QA best practices and advocate for player experience across the team.

Requirements

• 5+ years QA experience in video game industry; 2+ years in senior/lead QA role
• Shipped at least one commercial PC or console title
• Experience with console development hardware, build preparation, game development pipelines, and agile workflows
• Deep knowledge of functional, regression, certification testing; bug tracking with Jira
• Strong leadership, mentoring, written/verbal communication skills
• Comfort in English and Japanese bilingual environment
• Bachelor's degree or 10 years experience for Japanese visa

Nice to have

• Experience in indie/mid-sized studios
• Familiarity with Unity/Unreal engines
• Coordinating external QA vendors
• Live-service/post-launch pipelines
• Console certification knowledge (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo)
• Basic test automation/scripting

Culture & Benefits

• 12-month fixed-term employment role
• Humble, responsible, proactive team culture with positive problem-solving attitude
• Collaborative indie environment balancing structure and creative agility
• Willingness to go the extra mile and support others
• Open to change, learning, and teamwork