CS QA Team Lead (Developer / Automation-Focused)

We run a multi-brand direct-to-consumer e-commerce business with high-volume customer support across multiple European markets. Tickets are handled by a mix of human agents and AI-assisted responses on a modern helpdesk platform (we use Zendesk, but Freshdesk or similar experience works too). We're hiring a CS QA Team Lead who thinks like a developer. This is not a traditional QA seat — the core of the job is building the internal platform and automation that lets a small QA team cover thousands of tickets a week instead of dozens. You'll design and build the tooling (using Claude and helpdesk APIs) that auto-scores tickets at scale, then use it to own quality across every customer interaction, human and AI. If you like building systems more than filling out scorecards by hand, this role is for you. What you'll do Build the QA platform. Design and develop the internal app/automation that ingests tickets via helpdesk APIs, auto-scores them with Claude, flags outliers, and surfaces coaching opportunities. This is the heart of the role. Replace manual sampling entirely with automated workflows — moving QA from spot-checking dozens of tickets to systematically covering thousands. Build dashboards tracking QA scores, defect categories, and trends per brand, market, and response source (human vs AI). Own the CS QA program across all brands: scorecards, calibration, coaching, escalation reviews — increasingly driven by the system you build. Audit both human agent tickets and AI-generated responses for tone, accuracy, policy adherence, hallucinations, and resolution quality — and translate what you find into automated checks. Lead and mentor 2–4 QA specialists; run weekly calibration sessions. Close the loop with CS Ops, Training, and the AI team — bad patterns become updated macros, refreshed training, new policies, or prompt fixes. Deliver monthly Voice-of-Customer and quality reports to leadership. You should have Strong hands-on development experience — comfortable building real tooling that integrates APIs, automates workflows, and wires up LLMs (Claude/ChatGPT) into production-quality internal systems. You write and ship code; you don't just spec it for someone else. Proven track record building something from scratch — a platform, an automation pipeline, an internal tool — not just operating one someone else handed you. Solid experience integrating with REST APIs and working with helpdesk platforms programmatically (Zendesk, Freshdesk, or similar) — views, macros, triggers, automations, and especially their APIs and reporting. Practical experience using Claude or ChatGPT as a building block — automating scoring, sampling, classification, and summarization at scale. A working understanding of CS QA: enough to audit AI/chatbot responses and catch hallucinations, tone drift, and policy violations, and to lead a small QA team. 2+ years in a QA or CS-quality context with some team leadership is ideal — but we care more about your ability to build than years spent running manual QA. Excellent written English; e-commerce / D2C background strongly preferred. Engagement Full-time, long-term (40 hrs/week). Remote, with full 8-hour daily overlap with EET/EEST.