QA Manager

About This Role

Managing the day-to-day work of QA analysts, QA automation analysts, and application testing personnel is the core of this role, ensuring software quality across the software development life cycle (SDLC). This is a hands-on supervisory role that combines team leadership with technical guidance and direct testing support when needed.

Responsibilities

• Assign and prioritize work across manual testing, automation, and application release testing
• Balance capacity against delivery commitments
• Establish clear expectations and provide onboarding, coaching, training, and development opportunities
• Oversee test plans, scenarios, cases, and test data covering functional, regression, integration, smoke, user acceptance, UI, and API testing
• Use business impact and technical risk to focus testing effort and maintain traceability to requirements and acceptance criteria
• Represent QA in backlog refinement, sprint planning, standups, reviews, and Kanban activities
• Identify testing dependencies early, estimate effort with the team, and escalate resource or schedule constraints before they affect releases
• Guide the development and maintenance of reliable frontend and backend automated tests for C#/.NET applications
• Partner with Development and DevOps to integrate tests into CI/CD pipelines, address unreliable tests, and prioritize automation that improves meaningful coverage and reduces repetitive work
• Establish consistent practices for documenting reproducible defects, including supporting evidence, severity, business impact, and verification results
• Coordinate defect triage with Product and Development, track resolution, and ensure fixes are retested
• Define test entry and exit criteria with stakeholders
• Coordinate pre-release smoke and regression testing
• Provide evidence-based readiness recommendations that clearly identify unresolved defects, coverage gaps, and residual risks
• Escalate release-blocking concerns to the appropriate decision-makers
• Coordinate testers supporting the Data Entry Application and other business applications
• Work with Technical Support, Concierge Services, Development, and business users to explain changes, target important workflows, and consolidate actionable feedback
• Coordinate test environment and test data needs across development, QA, integration, and user acceptance environments
• Support deployment validation, production issue reproduction, and post-release testing in accordance with established access and change procedures
• Review test cases, automation changes, and results for completeness and maintainability
• Help the team troubleshoot application and data issues using SQL, API testing tools, logs, and other appropriate diagnostic resources
• Maintain clear reporting on test progress, coverage, defect trends, automation reliability, and post-release issues
• Communicate status and risks to technical and non-technical stakeholders and turn recurring findings into prioritized improvement actions
• Partner with Development and Product to investigate root causes, prevent recurring defects, improve testability, and refine QA standards, documentation, frameworks, and release testing procedures

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Demonstrated progression in software quality assurance, including ownership of testing for software releases and experience leading, mentoring, or supervising QA personnel
• Experience coordinating manual and automated testing across web applications, backend services, APIs, and relational databases
• Strong understanding of the SDLC, Agile and Kanban practices, risk-based testing, defect management, and release validation
• Experience using Azure DevOps, Aha, or comparable tools to manage test plans, test cases, defects, work assignments, and testing status
• Practical knowledge of SQL for data validation and troubleshooting, REST API testing, and testing applications built on C#/.NET
• Working knowledge of UI automation tools such as Selenium, Playwright, or Cypress; automated test frameworks; version control; and CI/CD integration sufficient to guide technical testing decisions
• Ability to organize competing priorities, allocate testing resources, resolve dependencies, and communicate delivery risks clearly
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills, with the ability to coach colleagues and collaborate with technical and business stakeholders

Nice to have:

• Previous direct supervisory responsibility for a QA team spanning manual testing, automation, and business-user testing
• Hands-on experience building or maintaining automated tests, including test assertions, data validation, and setup and teardown logic
• Experience with Azure DevOps Test Plans and pipelines
• Experience testing enterprise, multi-user transaction-processing, or financial software applications
• Experience coordinating beta testing, user acceptance testing, and releases for operational applications such as the Data Entry Application
• Experience improving automation maintainability, test reporting, and defect prevention practices
• ISTQB or another relevant software testing certification

Important Details

• Success Factors: Testing priorities, ownership, and release expectations are clear across the team and its stakeholders; Release readiness decisions are supported by documented test results and transparent communication of remaining risks; Manual and automated coverage addresses critical business workflows, with reliable automation supporting repeatable delivery; Defect trends and post-release findings lead to measurable process improvements rather than recurring issues; Team members receive consistent guidance and opportunities to expand technical skills and application knowledge; QA, Development, Product, Support, and business users coordinate effectively to deliver dependable software