**Location** \| Remote — Latin America **Engagement Type** \| Independent contractor (services agreement) **Availability** \| General overlap with U.S. Eastern Time **About LoanBud** LoanBud is a fast\-growing fintech platform dedicated to SBA financing, connecting entrepreneurs to a nationwide network of lenders and helping small business owners access capital through a streamlined, technology\-driven process. We pride ourselves on a collaborative culture, meaningful work, and a strong commitment to supporting the backbone of the economy — small businesses. **Engagement Overview** LoanBud is seeking an independent contractor to provide QA services, helping ensure the quality and reliability of our lending platform. The contractor will own day\-to\-day functional and exploratory testing across the product while building strong testing fundamentals in a regulated, high\-stakes fintech environment where quality directly affects borrowers, partners, and lenders. This engagement has real room to grow, including gradual exposure to test automation with support from senior engineers. **Scope of Services** The contractor will provide services which may include: * Write, document and execute functional and exploratory test cases for web and API\-based flows, based on requirements and acceptance criteria. * Perform regression testing ahead of releases and support release\-readiness checks. * Log, track and re\-test defects with clear, reproducible steps, severity, and expected\-vs\-actual detail, through to resolution. * Coordinate with developers and product to understand features, clarify acceptance criteria, and flag coverage gaps and edge cases. * Test across development, staging and production environments, and verify data using basic queries. * Contribute to test documentation and keep test cases organized and current. * Support user acceptance testing (UAT) as the process is standardized. * Gradually pick up light test automation with guidance from senior engineers. **Requirements** * 1–2 years of QA / software testing experience (internships and academic projects considered). * Solid QA fundamentals: test case design, execution, defect reporting, and SDLC basics. * Comfortable testing web applications and REST/JSON APIs with tools like Postman. * Basic SQL for data verification. * Clear, detailed written communication — bug reports and test notes others can act on without back\-and\-forth. * Organized, detail\-oriented, and eager to learn in a fast\-paced environment. * Strong written and spoken English, and comfortable overlapping U.S. Eastern Time hours. **Nice to Have** Exposure to automation tools (Playwright, Selenium, Cypress) or a scripting language (JavaScript/TypeScript or Python); Jira/Confluence or a test\-management tool (TestRail, Zephyr); Git\-based workflows; interest in fintech, payments or lending; and Agile/Scrum exposure. **Working Arrangement \& Terms** This is a fully remote independent contractor engagement, not employment. The contractor sets their own schedule, methods, location and equipment, and should generally be reachable during U.S. Eastern Time business hours for feature discussions, testing and release checks. The contractor is responsible for their own taxes, social contributions, insurance and any registrations required in their jurisdiction, is not entitled to employee benefits, and is free to provide services to other clients. Fees are based on experience, ability and ownership, and are discussed during selection. **Selection Process** Submit a résumé and a short note on your QA experience (tools, types of testing, and a sample bug report if available). The process includes an initial conversation, a short psychometric assessment, and a technical evaluation, followed by a final conversation on scope and terms. Job Type: Full\-time Work Location: Remote