If you are looking for someone to join the QA team to automate tests, the failure is in the way the system is built. Your *developers* should be proficient (or start learning how to) in automating the tests, creating automated tests, and overall be able to automate the hell out of everything.
Having a separate QA department is a fail in that, there is an explicitly delegation of all those "things QA folks do" to that other department, so that devs can focus on the other things.
at the very least start with each team having a QA in the team, that is part of the team. then spread the knowledge of the QA dude to the rest of the team.
By looking for someone to do all that "other work" is keeping the system in fail state. instead of starting to grow your devs to be able to become better, and do that work so it's part of their work. *it is*.
Steps I'd take(assuming the team is in the learning phase):
- Start getting each dev/team into automation thinking mode
- Having small goals to automate more and more things, as we write them
- doing code reviews with an "automation" theme
- Having "automation week" a the team level