Manual QA Engineer for a Fintech Trading Platform

We are building a day trading platform with a lot of convenience features and advanced information available for the users. We are looking for an experienced Manual QA Engineer to join the team for 30-40 hours/week. The product is complex, so we need someone who can understand backend logic, broker/order lifecycle behavior, and edge cases well enough to test the platform thoroughly, not only click through the UI. The team includes 3 developers, 1 tech lead, and 1 project manager. The project is expected to run for approximately 3-4 months, including release preparation and stabilization. Responsibilities: • Create and execute test cases for frontend, backend, and integration flows • Test trading workflows such as market/limit orders, cancel flows, close/reverse position flows, take-profit/stop-loss updates, partial fills, rejects, timeouts, reconnects, and rollback states • Validate chart behavior, order overlays, positions, order history, trading journal, watchlists, alerts, notifications, and settings • Test market data states including live, delayed, stale, disconnected, and entitlement-blocked states • Verify broker connection/account selection flows and user-facing error states • Report clear, reproducible bugs with steps, screenshots/video, logs, expected result, and actual result • Support regression testing, staging validation, UAT, release checklist, and production readiness Mandatory qualifications: • 3+ years of QA experience • Experience testing medium or large projects with multiple developers • Strong manual testing experience with complex web applications • Ability to understand backend logic, state transitions, and edge cases • Strong written communication and bug reporting skills • Dedicated availability for 30-40 hours/week during the project Nice to have: • Experience with trading, fintech, broker integrations, crypto, stocks, futures, or market data platforms • Experience testing dashboards, charts, real-time data, or WebSocket-driven applications • Experience with browser devtools, logs, SQL basics, or test data setup • Experience using AI tools to improve QA planning, test case generation, and exploratory testing Other details: • Individual freelancers only; no agencies • Region: Europe or Africa preferred • Rate: $15-20/hour, depending on experience