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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Manager – Quality Assurance

💰 $90,000 - $140,000

Quality AssuranceEngineeringManagementSoftware Testing

🎯 Role Definition

The Manager – Quality Assurance is a hands-on leader accountable for defining and executing the organization's quality strategy across multiple product lines, building and coaching a high-performing QA team, implementing scalable automation and CI/CD testing pipelines, and ensuring that releases meet functional, performance, security, and regulatory quality standards. This role partners closely with Product, Engineering, DevOps, Security and Customer Support to establish quality metrics, reduce production defects, and improve time-to-market while maintaining a strong focus on customer experience.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior QA Engineer / Lead QA Engineer with demonstrated leadership and automation ownership
  • Test Automation Engineer progressing into people and process management
  • Technical Project Manager or Engineering Lead with strong testing background

Advancement To:

  • Director of Quality Assurance / Director of QA Engineering
  • Head of Engineering Operations / VP of Engineering (Quality and Reliability)
  • Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for smaller product organizations

Lateral Moves:

  • Release Manager / Release Engineering Lead
  • DevOps Engineering Manager (focus on CI/CD and test environments)
  • Product Manager for quality-focused product lines

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Define, document and champion an enterprise-wide QA strategy and test approach that aligns with product roadmaps, regulatory requirements, and operational priorities while reducing cycle time and defect leakage into production.
  • Lead, mentor and scale a cross-functional QA organization (manual testers, automation engineers, performance engineers, QA analysts) including hiring, career development, performance reviews, and resource planning to meet delivery objectives.
  • Design and own the test automation strategy including framework selection, automation coverage targets, maintainability guidelines, and enforcement of code-quality practices for UI, API, integration, and end-to-end test suites.
  • Establish and continuously improve CI/CD-integrated test pipelines (Jenkins/GitLab/GitHub Actions or equivalent) to enable fast feedback, automated gating for releases, and reliable execution of regression and smoke tests across environments.
  • Drive adoption of test design best practices (risk-based testing, BDD/TDD where appropriate, test case review, traceability to requirements) to ensure clear coverage of functional, integration, and non-functional requirements.
  • Define and track quality metrics and KPIs (escaped defects, defect density, mean time to detect/resolve, automation pass rate, test cycle time) and present actionable reporting to executive stakeholders to drive data-informed decisions.
  • Oversee defect lifecycle management, ensure efficient triage processes with Engineering and Product, prioritize remediation of high-severity issues, and conduct root cause analysis and post-incident reviews to prevent recurrence.
  • Manage performance, load, and scalability testing programs using tools such as JMeter, LoadRunner, or cloud-based alternatives, including establishing SLAs, identifying bottlenecks, and working with Engineering to remediate capacity constraints.
  • Ensure security and compliance testing practices are integrated into QA processes, coordinating with security teams for vulnerability scanning, SAST/DAST results, and validation of remediation before release.
  • Collaborate with Product Management and Engineering leads to define acceptance criteria, testability requirements, and release readiness checklists; act as the quality gatekeeper for major releases and hotfixes.
  • Oversee test environment and test data management strategies to ensure reproducible test runs, secure handling of production-like data, and efficient provisioning and tear-down of test environments in cloud/on-prem infrastructure.
  • Evaluate, select and manage relationships with QA tool vendors and third-party testing partners for test automation platforms, performance testing services, and external compliance/audit testing as needed.
  • Drive continuous improvement initiatives including automation backlog prioritization, test flakiness reduction, defect prevention programs, and process streamlining to improve velocity and quality.
  • Cultivate and enforce coding and testing standards for automated tests, including code reviews, version control practices, branching strategies, and pipeline-as-code for QA artifacts.
  • Plan and manage QA budgets, headcount forecasting, and technology investments, balancing quality outcomes with cost-efficiency and business priorities.
  • Coordinate and execute user acceptance testing (UAT) programs and pilot releases with internal and external stakeholders, capturing feedback and ensuring issues are resolved before general availability.
  • Lead cross-functional quality readiness reviews and go/no-go decision processes for major product releases, ensuring risk assessments, rollback plans, and monitoring/observability are in place.
  • Implement and maintain accessibility testing practices and standards (WCAG) to ensure products meet legal and customer accessibility requirements where applicable.
  • Partner with Customer Support and Site Reliability teams to triage production incidents, lead defect analysis, prioritize root-cause fixes, and feed insights back into testing and development processes to reduce repeat incidents.
  • Drive adoption of test automation for APIs, microservices and event-driven systems, including contract testing and service virtualization to enable reliable CI pipelines and decoupled testing of dependent services.
  • Sponsor and lead quality-focused training programs and brown-bag sessions to upskill engineering teams on testing practices, automation tools, and quality culture adoption across the organization.
  • Establish and manage effective QA governance, including release documentation, audit trails for regulated environments, and maintenance of QA runbooks and standards for repeatable, auditable processes.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc quality and data requests, providing analytical insight into defect trends, release risk, and test coverage gaps to senior leadership.
  • Contribute to the organization's quality and test automation roadmap, aligning tool investments with long-term product and platform strategies.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate regulatory, compliance, and business-critical requirements into measurable QA activities and test cases.
  • Participate in sprint planning, agile ceremonies, and continuous delivery retrospectives to refine team processes and prioritize QA work within engineering iterations.
  • Advocate for and implement telemetry and monitoring requirements to enable post-release quality tracking and rapid detection of regressions in production.
  • Represent QA in vendor contract negotiations and manage external testing engagements, ensuring SLAs, deliverables and security expectations are met.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Test strategy & QA leadership: proven ability to define and execute enterprise-level QA strategies and roadmaps.
  • Test automation frameworks and tools: experience with Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Appium or equivalent for UI automation.
  • API & integration testing: strong experience with Postman, SoapUI, REST-assured, or equivalent API testing approaches.
  • CI/CD & DevOps integration: practical experience integrating tests into Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or similar pipelines.
  • Performance and load testing: hands-on with JMeter, Gatling, LoadRunner or cloud-based load testing platforms.
  • Programming and scripting: proficiency in one or more languages such as Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Ruby for writing automation.
  • Test management & defect tracking: Jira, Zephyr, TestRail or equivalent test management tools and effective defect triage processes.
  • Databases & SQL: ability to validate data integrity and write SQL queries against test and production-like databases.
  • Service virtualization & contract testing: experience with WireMock, Pact or similar tools to decouple system dependencies.
  • Security & compliance testing: familiarity with SAST/DAST tools, vulnerability scanning, penetration testing coordination and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA where applicable).
  • Observability & monitoring platforms: familiarity with logging and monitoring tools (e.g., ELK, Datadog, New Relic) to validate post-release behavior.
  • Cloud and environment provisioning: knowledge of AWS/Azure/GCP, containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) for test environment strategy.
  • Test design techniques: risk-based testing, boundary analysis, equivalence partitioning, BDD (Cucumber/Gherkin) and TDD practices.
  • Automation metrics and analytics: experience defining automation coverage, flakiness metrics, and ROI measurement for test automation investments.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management — hiring, coaching, mentoring and building high-performing teams.
  • Excellent stakeholder management — able to influence product, engineering and business leaders to prioritize quality.
  • Clear written and verbal communication — able to present quality metrics and recommendations to executives and technical teams.
  • Analytical and data-driven mindset — capable of leveraging metrics to drive decisions and continuous improvement.
  • Problem-solving and critical thinking — leads root cause investigations and drives corrective action.
  • Strategic mindset with execution focus — balances long-term quality initiatives with short-term delivery commitments.
  • Prioritization and time management — skilled at triaging work, balancing risk, and focusing on highest-impact activities.
  • Change management and cultural influence — drives adoption of quality best practices across distributed teams.
  • Collaboration and cross-functional empathy — works effectively with Product, Engineering, Security, and Support teams.
  • Resilience and adaptability — able to manage high-pressure release windows and pivot when priorities change.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related technical field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in a relevant discipline or MBA with technical focus.
  • Professional certifications such as ISTQB (Advanced Level), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), or relevant automation/tool certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Electrical / Computer Engineering
  • Data Science or related quantitative disciplines

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 6 - 12+ years in software quality assurance, with at least 3 years in a people-management role or leading cross-functional QA programs.

Preferred:

  • 8+ years of progressive QA experience including leadership of multiple QA teams, hands-on automation experience, and demonstrated impact on release quality and delivery speed.
  • Proven track record working in Agile/Scrum environments and integrating QA into modern DevOps pipelines.
  • Experience in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, payments) is highly desirable.
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