Job Purpose

As a QA Technical Lead, you will lead the quality engineering strategy for assigned product areas by defining test approaches, driving automation excellence, and ensuring high-quality software delivery. You will provide technical leadership, mentor QA engineers, collaborate with Product and Engineering teams, and establish scalable automation frameworks and quality processes while driving continuous improvement through modern testing practices, AI-assisted testing, and AI-powered engineering solutions.

Job Responsibilities

Essential Functions:

Define and own the overall test strategy (manual and automated) aligned with product goals, release timelines, and business risk.
Lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable automation frameworks using Playwright and modern automation best practices.
Establish automation architecture, framework standards, and coding guidelines across the QA team.
Review and approve test plans, test cases, automation designs, and code reviews to ensure quality standards.
Define and manage the regression automation roadmap, ensuring automation coverage aligns with release commitments.
Lead root cause analysis for escaped defects and drive continuous improvements in quality and testing processes.
Mentor, coach, and develop QA Engineers, Automation Engineers, and Associate QA Engineers through regular feedback and technical guidance.
Plan, prioritize, and allocate testing activities across the team based on sprint priorities and release commitments.
Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, DevOps, and Release Management throughout the software development lifecycle.
Own release sign-off decisions by communicating quality status, risks, coverage gaps, and known issues to stakeholders.
Drive UI, API, database, and end-to-end automation strategies across multiple products.
Define, monitor, and report quality metrics, including automation coverage, defect leakage, regression pass rate, cycle time, and release readiness.
Drive CI/CD integration and continuous testing practices to improve delivery efficiency.
Evaluate and recommend modern automation frameworks, AI-assisted testing approaches, testing tools, and AI-powered engineering solutions to improve quality, productivity, and automation efficiency.
Support hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, and career development of QA team members.

Non-Essential Functions

Experience with performance and load testing tools such as JMeter is an added advantage.
Familiarity with cloud-based testing platforms and container technologies (e.g., Docker) is preferred.
Exposure to AI-powered software development and testing tools is desirable.
Knowledge of Hospitality, SaaS, or Enterprise software products is an advantage.

Job Requirements

Required Education and Experience:

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in Software Quality Assurance, including 2+ years in a Technical Lead or Team Lead role.
Strong hands-on experience with Playwright using JavaScript or TypeScript.
Experience designing and maintaining scalable automation frameworks using Page Object Model (POM) or similar design patterns.
Experience working in Agile/Scrum development environments.
Strong experience in UI, API, database, and end-to-end automation testing.
Experience with REST API automation, SQL-based data validation, and backend testing.
Experience integrating automation frameworks with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps.
Experience with Git, Jira, Xray, branching strategies, pull requests, and collaborative development workflows.
Proven ability to define test strategy, automation architecture, and release quality standards.
Experience defining and reporting quality metrics, including automation coverage, defect leakage, regression pass rate, and release readiness.
Demonstrated experience leading QA teams, mentoring engineers, and driving technical delivery.
Strong understanding of Functional, Regression, Smoke, Integration, End-to-End, and Risk-Based Testing.

Preferred Education And Experience

Experience in Hospitality, Travel, SaaS, or Enterprise software products is preferred.
Experience scaling automation practices across multiple products or teams.
Experience using AI-powered development and testing tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude, Kiro, ChatGPT, or similar) is preferred.
Experience testing AI/LLM-based systems, including prompt validation, response quality, hallucination detection, authorization, and security validation, is an added advantage.
Experience with performance and load testing tools such as JMeter is an added advantage.

Expected Competencies

Strong leadership, mentoring, and coaching skills.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
Ability to collaborate effectively across cross-functional teams.
Strong organizational, planning, and prioritization skills.
Ownership mindset with a focus on quality, continuous improvement, and delivery excellence.

Work Timings

This is a full-time position. Days and hours of work are Monday through Friday, and should be flexible to support different time zones ranging between 11AM IST to 2AM IST, Work schedule may include evening hours or weekends due to client needs per manager instructions This role will be working in Hybrid Mode and will require at least 2 days work from office at Hyderabad. Occasional evening and weekend work may be expected in case of job-related emergencies or client needs.

EEO Statement

Cendyn provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Cendyn complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

Cendyn expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of Cendyn's employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Team Lead - Quality Assurance