Job Summary
The Lead QA Engineer plays a pivotal role in ensuring the quality, performance, and reliability of software products before they reach End Users. This position demands a proactive leader who can drive quality assurance across complex, enterprise-level solutions.
Key Responsibilities:
Take full ownership of end-to-end quality assurance processes, encompassing front-end, back-end, integration, performance, scalability, and regression testing.
Lead the design, development, and execution of test scripts across a wide range of technical platforms and services, including Web, Data, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications.
Ensure robust protection of complex and interdependent systems across the technology landscape through measurable test coverage and actionable quality metrics.
Champion best practices in QA methodologies and continuously improve testing strategies to align with evolving business and technical requirements.
Job Description
As the Lead QA Engineer, you will serve as the automation and manual testing expert within one or more agile squads. You will play a critical role throughout the entire solution development lifecycle, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, scalable, and reliable software products and services.
Key Responsibilities:
Lifecycle Involvement: Actively contribute to all phases of the solution development lifecycle as a key member of one or more squads, with a focus on automation testing.
Requirements Analysis: Participate in the analysis of technical requirements during the early stages of product and service development, maintenance, and optimization across squads and tribes.
Automation Strategy: Continuously identify and evaluate opportunities for automation across the suite of technical products and services.
Framework Design: Utilize a strong understanding of solution architecture and infrastructure to design and implement holistic automation testing frameworks tailored to identified needs.
Test Development & Execution: Develop and execute automated test scripts using a variety of tools and technologies, ensuring alignment with user stories and business requirements.
Accountability & Ownership:
Own and drive the end-to-end testing strategy as the single point of accountability for all testing frameworks. Ensure the integrity, scalability, and effectiveness of these frameworks in validating comprehensive solutions—including commercial off-the-shelf applications integrated with custom-built components. Take full ownership of regression testing and provide structured support for User Acceptance Testing (UAT), ensuring that all testing activities align with business objectives and deliver high-quality outcomes
Comprehensive Testing: Perform testing at multiple levels, including user story validation, black-box testing, scalability testing, and full integration testing.
Test Design & Analysis: Apply critical and predictive thinking to define both positive and negative test scenarios. Create and analyse test data to support robust testing outcomes.
CI/CD Integration: Leverage your knowledge of CI/CD pipelines to configure and integrate automated test suites into test management systems and custom test harnesses.
Manual Testing Support: When necessary, create, coordinate, and execute manual test cases and plans. Review functional specifications and user stories to design effective test strategies.
Collaboration: Work closely with developers to implement test hooks and ensure seamless automation integration. Collaborate across teams to troubleshoot software and environment issues.
Reporting & Metrics: Develop custom QA metrics and reporting solutions to track quality trends and support continuous improvement.
Goal Setting & Delivery: Set clear product delivery goals and ensure timely achievement of milestones in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
Innovation & Research: Stay current with emerging tools and techniques in automation testing. Proactively research and introduce new solutions to enhance testing capabilities
DevOps
Champion Engineering Best Practices: Promote and uphold engineering excellence by mentoring team members on modern testing strategies, DevOps principles, and automation-first mindsets.
Build Automation Testing Capability: Develop the team's proficiency in automation testing tools and frameworks, fostering a culture of continuous learning and quality ownership.
Code-Driven Testing Design: Utilize expertise in multiple programming languages to architect and implement robust, scalable test solutions tailored to specific products and services.
System-Level Understanding: Demonstrate a deep understanding of the entire technical solution under test. Take initiative to run, observe, and validate the system, ensuring that test cases reflect real-world usage and code viability.
Shift-Right Accountability: Guide the team from feature-focused testing to full product ownership—encouraging accountability for quality throughout the delivery pipeline, from development to deployment and monitoring in production
People Management
Capability Development: Foster the growth of team members by building their expertise in designing and executing automated and manual test scripts using a variety of modern testing tools and technologies.
Mentorship & Coaching: Provide structured mentorship and ongoing guidance to interns and junior QA engineers, supporting their technical development and career progression within the testing discipline.
Quality Oversight: Ensure the quality and consistency of both automated and manual testing deliverables across the broader engineering teams by implementing robust review and validation processes.
Peer Collaboration & Review: Lead peer reviews and collaborative problem-solving sessions within the QA community, promoting knowledge sharing and continuous improvement across teams.
Talent Acquisition Support: Act as a technical subject matter expert in the recruitment process, helping to attract, assess, and onboard high-caliber QA professionals aligned with the organization's quality standards.
Strategic Team Development: Contribute to the planning and development of the wider product engineering team by offering QA insights and aligning testing capabilities with long-term business and technical goals.
Risk and Compliance
Policy Compliance & Governance: Ensure all testing activities strictly adhere to the organization's Service Engineering, Risk, and Governance policies, maintaining compliance throughout the development and testing lifecycle.
Security & Architecture Alignment: Align all testing frameworks, tools, and scripts with Group Architecture and Security standards to minimize vulnerabilities and ensure secure, scalable solutions.
Risk Accountability: Assume full accountability as the single point of contact for risks arising from testing design failures post-deployment, ensuring swift resolution and continuous improvement.
Operational Resilience Participation: Actively engage in Business Continuity Planning (BCP), Disaster Recovery (DR), and Incident Management processes. Lead root cause analysis and implement mitigation strategies to prevent recurrence of critical incidents.
Post-Incident Realignment: Continuously refine and realign testing frameworks, monitoring tools, and automation scripts in response to risk-related events or incidents, ensuring adaptive and resilient testing practices
Skills and Experience Required:
5+ years relevant experience in a similar role
Relevant degree
ISTQB Certification required
Scripting skills and knowledge
Proficient in automation testing tools and frameworks
Education
Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology
