Quality Automation - Manager

You Are

A hands-on SDET and quality leader with 12+ years in test automation and software quality engineering. You write and review automation, set and execute the quality strategy for your program, and coach a team while remaining technically engaged. You are comfortable in global, collaborative delivery environments and you care about embedding quality across the full software development lifecycle — not only at the end of a sprint.

The Work

You will lead quality for complex application delivery: partnering with product, development, and architecture teams; defining and executing a modern test strategy; and applying AI-enabled approaches where they deliver measurable value. You will take accountability for your team's delivery outcomes, technical direction, and continuous improvement, acting as both a technical lead and a client-facing quality partner.

Key Responsibilities

Quality Strategy & Leadership

• Define and lead end-to-end quality for your program, including early validation, risk-based testing, and continuous testing.
• Own quality strategy, test planning, estimation, execution governance, defect management, and release-readiness assessment across your workstreams.
• Establish the appropriate balance of unit, API, UI, integration, regression, and exploratory testing based on product risk and architecture.

SDET & Custom Application Quality

• Lead the design, development, and enhancement of automation frameworks and validation components — not test cases alone.
• Design, implement, and scale maintainable automation frameworks for web applications and services, ensuring scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Build UI, API, and where required mobile automation using Playwright and comparable tools such as Appium and REST Assured.
• Partner with developers to improve unit-test coverage, testability, coding standards, and shift-left quality practices.

AI-Enabled Testing & Innovation

• Use AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor and agentic test automation solutions to accelerate test design, implementation, maintenance, and analysis responsibly.
• Apply GenAI tooling (for example GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini) to improve test design, code generation, debugging, and root cause analysis.
• Evaluate emerging AI-enabled testing tools through controlled proofs of concept and recommend adoption based on measurable value, security, accuracy, and maintainability.

DevSecOps & CI/CD Integration

• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines and define quality gates that provide fast, reliable feedback.
• Embed automated testing into delivery pipelines such as GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, covering version control and artifact management.

Cross-Platform Quality Delivery

• Lead testing across web, API, and mobile (iOS/Android) layers as the engagement requires.
• Apply contract testing, test-data management, service virtualization or mocking, and observability practices.

Client Engagement & Advisory

• Partner with client and business stakeholders to shape quality strategy and support transformation initiatives.
• Facilitate workshops and deliver pragmatic quality solutions in ambiguous or evolving delivery environments.

Team Leadership & Delivery Accountability

• Manage, mentor, and develop a high-performing quality engineering team, local or distributed, while remaining technically engaged.
• Own your team's delivery outcomes and guide day-to-day technical decisions.
• Coach team members, set technical direction, review automation code, and promote continuous learning and engineering discipline.

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Collaborate across product, development, architecture, DevOps, security, and business teams to resolve dependencies and embed quality throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Continuous Improvement & Capability Building

• Improve test coverage, automation maturity, and delivery efficiency over time.
• Champion quality engineering best practices, reusable standards, automation patterns, and shared assets that build team capability.

Reporting & Insights

• Produce clear test outcome reports covering execution status, coverage, defect trends, residual risk, release recommendations, and improvement actions.
• Track meaningful quality metrics and deliver dashboards that identify systemic issues, improve predictability, and reduce escaped defects.

Security, Accessibility & Compliance

• Embed secure, accessible, and compliant quality practices into delivery, including in regulated environments such as financial services, public sector, and healthcare.

What You'll Need

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related discipline.
• 12+ years of experience in test automation, SDET, or software quality engineering roles, with demonstrated ownership of complex automation programs.
• Proven experience leading quality engineering teams, managing priorities, mentoring engineers, and influencing delivery outcomes.
• Hands-on coding proficiency in at least one of TypeScript, JavaScript, C#, Python, or Java, with experience building automation frameworks.
• Strong understanding of object-oriented programming, clean-code principles, reusable framework design, version control, and code reviews.
• Practical experience with Playwright or a comparable modern UI automation framework.
• Strong API testing and automation knowledge, including REST services, authentication, data validation, error handling, and service-level test design.
• Strong grounding in functional testing techniques, including requirements analysis, test design, boundary and negative testing, risk-based testing, regression testing, and defect lifecycle management.
• Experience with unit-testing frameworks and close collaboration with development teams to improve unit and component test coverage.
• Proven experience integrating testing into DevSecOps pipelines, including CI/CD, automated quality gates, reporting, source control, and artifact management.
• Strong experience in test strategy, test-data management, mocking, and observability.
• Ability to create effective test strategies and communicate concise, evidence-based test outcome reports to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent problem-solving, stakeholder-management, written communication, and cross-team collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in SAFe Agile or other scaled Agile environments.
• Strong understanding of GenAI in the SDLC, including prompting techniques and AI-augmented testing approaches.
• Experience with contract testing and advanced observability frameworks.
• Background in cross-platform application testing across web and mobile.
• Experience in compliance-heavy or regulated industries such as financial services, public sector, or healthcare.
• Experience contributing to quality engineering transformation or digital testing programs.
• Experience leading quality engineering across multiple products, platforms, or distributed teams.
• Experience modernizing legacy automation suites or transitioning to Playwright and AI-enabled testing approaches.
• Familiarity with non-functional quality areas such as performance, security, accessibility, reliability, and observability.
• Relevant testing, cloud, Agile, DevOps, or engineering certifications are an advantage.

Leadership Competencies

• Lead with accountability, sound judgment, and a strong customer-focused quality mindset.
• Communicate quality risks, trade-offs, and recommendations clearly to engineering leaders and business stakeholders.
• Build alignment across teams without relying solely on authority, and facilitate timely resolution of quality issues.
• Create an inclusive, collaborative environment that supports coaching, knowledge sharing, and sustainable delivery.
• Continuously improve processes while balancing speed, reliability, maintainability, and business value.

Travel Requirements

Job Posting End Date