Product Quality Specialist

STATEWISE

Product Quality Specialist

Internal Role  |  Reports to QA Lead  |  Healthcare Technology

The Role

Traditional QA creates a waiting game. Developers build, then hand off to QA, then wait for results, then fix, then retest. This cycle adds time, creates friction, and separates the people who understand the product best from the moment quality decisions are being made.

The Product Quality Specialist role eliminates that gap. This is not a traditional QA position. You are a product-minded quality owner who embeds directly into the development workflow, starting at refinement and staying engaged through done-done. Your domain expertise, your understanding of our customers, and your knowledge of real-world workflows are what make this role powerful.

You will work alongside developers from the moment a feature is refined or a defect is triaged, ensuring that what gets built is right the first time. You will define what done-done means, validate it through hands-on testing and developer demos, and hold the bar for quality before anything moves toward release.

Who is Statewise

Statewise is building the future of Medicaid home care software. We are the only EMR and EVV platform built specifically for Medicaid home care providers across Pediatric Nursing, Therapy, Personal Care, and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) services. Our software is designed to handle complex, state-by-state rules and real clinical workflows without the bloat of traditional systems. Everything we build is rooted in simplifying complexity so providers can focus on delivering high-quality care.

What This Role Is and Is Not

This Role Is

• A product-facing quality ownership role embedded in the development cycle.
• Involved from sprint refinement through feature completion, not after.
• Responsible for defining what “done-done” means for every feature and defect.
• A shift-left position: quality thinking happens during design, not after code.

This Role Is Not

• A traditional QA tester who receives completed work and writes pass/fail results.
• A gatekeeper who slows delivery down.
• Responsible for regression suites or release management (that is the QA Lead’s domain).
• A support role with a new title. The day-to-day work changes fundamentally.

Key Responsibilities

Sprint Refinement and Story Review

• Participate in refinement sessions as the quality voice in the room.
• Challenge acceptance criteria that are vague, incomplete, or untestable.
• Identify edge cases, business rule conflicts, and configuration-specific risks before development begins.
• Ensure every story has clear, testable done-done criteria before it enters a sprint.

Test Case Design During Development

• Write test scenarios and validation criteria while the developer is building the feature, not after.
• Collaborate with the developer on expected behavior, boundary conditions, and data scenarios.
• Leverage domain expertise (billing, scheduling, authorization, IDD workflows) to design tests that reflect real-world usage.
• Document test cases in Azure DevOps test plans linked to the story.

Developer Demo (Dev Done Validation)

• Attend a 1:1 offline developer demo for every feature before it moves to formal testing.
• The developer walks through what was built, how it works, and where decisions were made.
• Use this session to validate that the developer considers their work done and to catch gaps early in a low-friction setting.
• Developer demo is a critical gate: if the feature does not hold up in a 1:1 walkthrough, it is not ready for broader testing.

Hands-On Functional Testing Before PR Merge

• Test the feature in the development or staging environment before the PR is merged to the release branch.
• Validate against done-done criteria, acceptance criteria, and edge cases identified during refinement.
• Provide clear, actionable feedback to the developer. If it’s not done-done, it doesn’t move forward.
• Test across web and mobile where applicable.

Defect Triage and Verification

• Participate in defect triage to assess severity, reproducibility, and business impact.
• Verify defect fixes against the original reported behavior and related edge cases.
• Ensure defect fixes do not introduce regressions in adjacent functionality.
• Maintain clear defect documentation with reproduction steps, expected behavior, and environment details.

What We’re Looking For

• You understand our product, our customers, and the real-world workflows they depend on.
• You think in systems, not scripts. You see how a change in billing logic can ripple into scheduling or authorization.
• You are comfortable challenging a developer or product decision when something doesn’t add up.
• You communicate clearly: when you say something isn’t done-done, you can explain exactly why.
• You are detail-oriented but pragmatic. You focus on what matters most, not just what’s easiest to test.
• You are proactive. You don’t wait for work to be handed to you; you insert yourself where quality needs attention.
• You take ownership of outcomes, not just task completion.

This Role Is Not a Fit If You

• Prefer to wait for completed work before engaging.
• Are uncomfortable giving direct feedback to developers about quality issues.
• Need highly prescriptive instructions before acting.
• Focus primarily on writing test cases rather than understanding systems and business impact.
• Are uncomfortable being accountable for done-done decisions.
• See quality as something that happens at the end of development rather than throughout it.

What Success Looks Like

Within 2 Weeks

• You can articulate the difference between this role and traditional QA.
• You have attended refinement sessions and developer demos as an observer.
• You understand how stories move through Azure DevOps from refinement to deployment.
• You have reviewed recently completed features and can describe where quality gaps existed.
• You have staging and mobile testing environment access and can execute basic tests.

Within 4 Weeks

• You are actively contributing quality input in refinement sessions.
• You have written test scenarios for features during development, not after handoff.
• You have tested features before PR merge with documented feedback to the developer.
• You have attended developer demos and provided meaningful input on dev-done readiness.
• You have verified defect fixes with clear documentation.
• Developers see your involvement as adding value, not slowing them down.
• You can independently define done-done criteria for a standard-complexity story.

Within 8 Weeks

• You independently own quality for your assigned features with minimal oversight.
• Developers actively seek you out during development, not just at handoff.
• No feature moves to release without your sign-off on done-done.
• Defect escape rate for features you cover is measurably lower.
• You have identified systemic quality patterns and proposed improvements.
• Engineering leadership sees this role as essential, not experimental.

Statewise is an equal opportunity employer.