The Quality Engineering Lead is responsible for leading the transformation to a modern quality model, embedding quality across the software lifecycle through shift-left testing, automation, and enforceable quality standards. This role balances execution and strategy while establishing best practices, standards, and governance to support long-term growth to establish a federated quality model across delivery teams.
The ideal candidate is self-driven, pragmatic, detail-oriented, and capable of building lightweight but effective QA processes in a collaborative environment.
Key Responsibilities
1. Quality Transformation & Enablement
- Lead transition to quality engineering practices
- Mentor developers and BAs on writing testable requirements & unit/integration test expectations
- Drive adoption of developer-owned testing (unit, integration, contract testing)
- Promote testability in system design and architecture
- Embed quality ownership within delivery teams
- Establish “definition of done” inclusive of quality gates
- Coach teams on risk-based and lean testing approaches
2. Test Strategy & Oversight
- Design and implement a scalable QA framework tailored to organizational needs
- Define QA standards, processes, templates, and governance practices
- Develop testing strategies across unit, integration, system, regression, and UAT support
- Define testing strategies across: integrated systems (APIs, middleware, SaaS platforms), data pipelines and transformations and downstream reporting impacts
- Establish data validation frameworks (reconciliation, completeness, accuracy)
- Ensure end-to-end test coverage across system boundaries
- Define release readiness criteria and quality gates
- Establish entry/exit criteria for each testing phase
- Introduce testability standards for requirements
- Apply lean testing principles: eliminate redundant testing; prioritize high-risk areas; and optimize test coverage vs effort
- Continuously evaluate ROI of testing activities
- Introduce best practices in risk-based testing and test coverage
3. Test Planning & Execution
- Ensure appropriate test design and coverage aligned to risk and business criticality
- Oversee defect lifecycle and quality signal integrity
- Identify, document, and track defects through resolution
- Define and enforce automated-first testing strategy
- Ensure appropriate coverage at unit, API, and integration layers
- Minimize manual regression through automation and risk-based testing
4. Test Automation
- Establish and expand automated test coverage
- Select and implement appropriate automation tools and frameworks
- Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines where applicable
- Define automation standards and maintain test suites
- Drive toward automation-first testing model
- Ensure critical paths are fully automated
- Continuously reduce manual regression footprint
5. Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
- Escalate quality risks proactively to leadership
- Communicate testing progress, risks, and quality metrics to stakeholders
- Own and drive UAT planning and execution
- Hold teams accountable for meeting quality standards
- Challenge incomplete or untestable requirements
- Enforce adherence to QA and release standards
- Act as final quality authority for release readiness, including the ability to block releases that do not meet defined criteria
6. Quality Governance & Standards
- Owns and enforces enterprise quality standards
- Establishes mandatory quality gates for all releases
- Establishes audit/compliance mechanisms
- Conducts periodic quality audits across teams
- Define controls for validating data integrity across environments (test vs production)
- Owns release quality sign-off
7. Continuous Improvement
- Introduce metrics and KPIs to measure quality and testing effectiveness
- Conduct root cause analysis on defects and recommend improvements
- Promote a quality-first mindset across teams
- Keep QA processes lightweight while maintaining discipline and rigor
Qualifications
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
- 5+ years of experience in software QA
- Experience building or maturing QA processes
Skills & Competencies
- Strong understanding of modern quality engineering practices (automation, CI/CD, shift-left)
- Experience defining quality strategy in complex system environments
- Experience with enterprise systems (ERP, SaaS platforms, integrations, and data platforms)
- Experience with automated testing frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Selenium, etc.)
- Experience with API and integration testing
- Understanding of SDLC and Agile methodologies
- Strong analytical and investigative skills
- Excellent communication and stakeholder coordination skills
- Highly independent and self-motivated
Preferred
- Experience implementing QA in growing or transforming organizations
- Familiarity with CI/CD tools
- 2+ years in a lead or senior QA role
- ISTQB or equivalent certification
Success Factors
- Increases release confidence and predictability
- Improves system reliability and uptime
- Reduces production defects and incident severity
- Decreases cycle time for testing and release validation
- Improves early defect detection (shift-left effectiveness)
- Establishes measurable quality KPIs tied to business outcomes, including:
- Defect leakage rate
- Escaped defects (production)
- Test coverage by layer (unit/API/UI)
- Release readiness score
- Mean time to detect defects
- % automation coverage of critical workflows
- Improves defect detection early in the lifecycle
- Ensures testing effort is aligned to business and technical risk
Benefits of Employment
ECPI University provides a comprehensive benefits program designed to help our faculty and staff stay healthy, feel supported, and maintain a work/life balance. To learn more about benefits at ECPI University, click HERE (https://www.ecpi.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/975404976-ECPI-employment-benefits-page-2024jan.pdf).
Committed to excellence and innovation, ECPI University is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.
Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights (https://www.eeoc.gov/poster) notice from the Department of Labor.
