Lead QA Engineer

Overview

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

Accountability for assigned project / product quality

Quality Ownership & Strategy

Own end-to-end product quality from development through production for a growing HR-focused organization.

Establish and champion a quality-first mindset across all teams, ensuring developers and QAs share accountability for quality outcomes.

Define and refine quality strategies, test plans, and quality gates for major releases and project milestones.

Review test coverage and quality across unit, backend, database, API, and UI layers, ensuring adherence to the Test Pyramid and best practices.

Lead defect management, including triage, root cause analysis, and risk assessment, recommending mitigation strategies before deployment.

Testing Planning & Execution

Design and implement functional testing strategies spanning pre-release, post-deployment, and production environments.

Develop, review, and maintain test scenarios and cases aligned with business requirements and user workflows.

Oversee regression, integration, and end-to-end testing cycles to assure system-wide quality and stability.

Collaborate with developers and product managers to identify risks early and validate features effectively.

Maintain clear test documentation, results, and QA reports to ensure visibility and traceability.

Coordinate with stakeholders to define acceptance criteria and ensure alignment between business goals and testing outcomes.

Collaboration & Leadership

Partner with engineering, product, and DevOps to maintain a unified quality vision across SDLC stages.

Mentor QA engineers and developers on effective test design, automation strategy, and risk-based testing.

Act as a quality advocate, promoting proactive testing practices, continuous improvement, and shared quality ownership.

Production Stability & Observability (Optional)

Plan and execute stability testing, including resilience, failover, and rollback scenarios.

Collaborate with SRE and DevOps to validate releases under production-like conditions.

Define and implement monitoring and observability strategies using AWS tools or third-party platforms (e.g., Datadog, CloudWatch).

Requirements

Qualifications

Mandatory Qualifications

6+ years of experience in software testing, with strong hands-on expertise in both manual and automation testing (E2E, API).

Proven quality ownership with transparent QA deliverables such as test strategy, plan, and release quality reports.

Strong ability to review and guide unit test, integration test quality and ensure overall test completeness across layers.

Hands-on experience in test case design, execution, and bug reporting.

Experience working in Agile (Scrum/Kanban) environments.

Excellent analytical, documentation, and communication skills.

Intermediate to advanced proficiency with test automation frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Postman, REST Assured).

Strong understanding of API testing, scripting languages, and integration validation.

Proven leadership mindset with cross-country collaboration experience.

Familiarity with test management tools (e.g., TestRail, Zephyr) and version control systems (e.g., Git).

Nice-to-Have Skills

Experience testing cloud-based applications (AWS, Azure).

Knowledge of back-office or HR domain products.

Exposure to performance or security testing (e.g., JMeter, K6).

Familiarity with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).

ISTQB Foundation certification.

2-3+ years of people management experience

Soft Skills

Strong communication and collaboration skills across functions and geographies.

Positive, proactive, and problem-solving mindset.

Commitment to fostering a shared ownership of quality within the team.