Senior Engineering Leader – Quality (QA Ownership)
Department: Engineering / Technology
Reports to: Director of Engineering
Scope: 250 engineers across multiple teams
Role Overview
This role is for a Senior Engineering - Leader who owns Quality across a large engineering organisation. You are not running a traditional QA function—you are responsible for embedding quality into how 250 engineers build, test, and ship software.
You will drive an automation-first, AI-enabled quality strategy, ensuring teams own quality end-to-end while maintaining a high bar for reliability, performance, and customer experience.
You are expected to challenge engineers, product managers, and senior stakeholders when quality is at risk. You do not trade quality for speed—you enable both.
You are expected to be on the tools and lead by example!
What You'll Own
Quality as an Engineering Discipline
- Make quality a core engineering responsibility, not a downstream QA activity
- Embed testing into design, development, and deployment workflows
- Drive a strong shift-left culture across all teams
- Define what good quality looks like and ensure it is consistently met
Automation & AI-Driven Testing
- Establish automation as the default across all layers (unit, API, integration, E2E)
- Drive adoption of AI-assisted testing (test generation, flakiness detection, intelligent coverage)
- Ensure all tests are integrated into CI/CD pipelines with fast feedback loops
- Continuously improve coverage, reliability, and execution speed at scale
Engineering Leadership & Standards
- Set and enforce quality standards, test strategies, and release criteria
- Define and track key metrics (defect leakage, coverage, MTTR, pipeline health)
- Own quality gates and block releases when standards are not met
- Lead root cause analysis and systemic improvements
Influencing & Driving Accountability
- Work directly with senior engineers and tech leads to improve quality practices
- Push back on delivery pressure when it compromises quality
- Hold teams accountable for the quality of what they ship
- Partner with Product to ensure clear, testable requirements
Building Capability (Not Dependency)
- Build and lead a small, high-impact group of SDETs / Quality Engineers where needed
- Focus on enablement, tooling, and frameworks—not manual testing capacity
- Coach teams to independently own testing and quality outcomes
What Success Looks Like
- Teams fully own quality with minimal reliance on manual QA
- High automation coverage across all critical paths
- Fast, reliable CI/CD pipelines with a strong test signal
- Reduced production defects and faster recovery when issues occur
- Engineers proactively prioritising quality without external enforcement
Requirements:
Experience
- 8–12+ years in software engineering, with strong exposure to testing and quality
- Proven experience as an Engineering Manager in a scaling organisation
- Track record of improving quality across multiple teams (not just within one team)
- Experience operating in modern Agile / DevOps environments
Technical Strength
- Strong background in software engineering (not just QA)
- Deep understanding of test strategies across the stack
- Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks and CI/CD systems
- Practical exposure to AI-driven testing tools and approaches
- Familiarity with distributed systems, micro services, and cloud environments
Leadership & Mindset
- High standards and unwillingness to compromise on quality
- Comfortable saying no to senior engineers and stakeholders when needed
- Lead by example on the tools and grow your own timber with your team
- Strong ownership mindset—you see quality as your responsibility, not someone else's
- Ability to influence without authority across many teams
- Pragmatic and outcome-focused—you balance speed and quality effectively
Nice to Have
- Experience transforming a QA function into an engineering-led quality model
- Background working in high-growth or scaling tech organisations
- Exposure to performance, security, and reliability engineering practices
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Requirements:
Design, develop, and execute automated test scripts using Selenium WebDriver, TestNG, and Appium.
Ensure test automation is maintained and updated in line with application changes.
Experience with Appium for mobile test automation.
Strong knowledge of API testing using Rest Assured.
Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins.
Stay updated with the latest trends, tools, and best practices in test automation.
Why This Role Matters
This role is critical to scaling engineering without sacrificing quality. You will shape how hundreds of engineers think about testing, automation, and ownership—moving the organisation away from QA as a gate and toward quality as a built-in capability.
