QA Lead/Manager

QA Lead

Rate: $65/hour

About the Role

The QA Lead will own quality from strategy through release, building and running the user acceptance testing (UAT) program, managing test environments, and moving the team toward smarter, more automated testing. This is a hands-on leadership role: the right person sets direction and builds process, but also writes test cases, builds automation, and digs into defects alongside the team.

This role works directly with the Director of IT and partners closely with business stakeholders, developers, and product owners to make sure what gets released works the way the business expects it to.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end QA and UAT efforts across projects and releases, from test planning through sign-off
• Set up, coordinate, and maintain UAT and user acceptance testing environments, including test data readiness and environment scheduling
• Work with business stakeholders to define acceptance criteria, guide them through UAT cycles, and turn their feedback into clear, actionable defects
• Design, build, and maintain automated test suites, and contribute directly to automation code
• Drive test automation strategy: identify what should be automated, evaluate tools and frameworks, and guide implementation across the team
• Perform hands-on functional, regression, integration, and API testing
• Build and improve QA processes, standards, and documentation so testing is consistent and repeatable
• Track and report on quality metrics, release readiness, and risk to the Director of IT and project leadership
• Mentor QA team members and set clear expectations for how testing gets done
• Partner with development and DevOps teams to integrate testing into CI/CD pipelines and bring testing earlier into the delivery cycle

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in software quality assurance, including at least 3 years in a QA lead role
• Strong hands-on experience running UAT programs and managing test environments
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining test automation using tools such as Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or similar
• Working knowledge of at least one programming or scripting language (Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, or C#)
• Experience with API testing tools such as Postman or REST Assured
• Ability to write SQL queries for test data setup and validation
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar)
• A track record of building or improving QA processes, not just following them
• Comfort working with business users and senior stakeholders, and the ability to explain technical issues in plain language
• Experience with test management and defect tracking tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, or TestRail
• Experience working in Agile delivery environments

Nice to Have

• Ecommerce experience, especially testing checkout flows, payments, order management, or customer-facing web platforms