Title: QA Analyst Leader (Waterfall QA)
Location: Torrance, CA (Hybrid of 4 days/week onsite and 1 day/week remote)
Contract Duration: September 2026 – December 31, 2027
This Senior QA Lead will plan, lead, and drive quality assurance activities across a complex enterprise modernization effort. This role requires an experienced, hands-on QA leader who can create the QA strategy, build detailed test plans, lead test teams, coordinate across multiple cross-functional workstreams, and provide detailed QA status reporting. The ideal candidate is proactive, structured, detail-oriented, and able to drive delivery rather than simply take direction.
This position requires strong waterfall and hybrid QA experience . Please note that candidates with only Agile delivery experience are not preferred unless they can demonstrate proven waterfall test planning, formal test execution, dependency management, stage-gate discipline, and release readiness support.
The ideal candidate will be a highly accomplished QA and Test Delivery leader with a track record of successfully leading enterprise-scale implementations involving complex system integrations, modernization efforts, and multi-stakeholder environments. This individual will have a combination of hands-on testing expertise, strong project management discipline, and executive-level communication skills to drive quality, mitigate risk, and ensure successful program outcomes.
Responsibilities will include the following:
- Own and drive the overall QA strategy, test planning, test readiness, execution tracking, defect management, and QA reporting for assigned program scope.
- Create and maintain detailed test plans, test schedules, test scenarios, test cases, entry and exit criteria, test data plans, environment readiness plans, and sign-off checkpoints.
- Lead QA execution across business teams, IT teams, vendor teams, SaaS platform teams, downstream application teams, integration teams, infrastructure teams, security teams, and legacy/mainframe teams.
- Stay hands-on with testing details, including test coverage, test execution progress, defect status, test data readiness, environment readiness, dependencies, risks, and open decisions.
- Drive daily or regular QA checkpoints during test execution and ensure progress, blockers, defects, decisions, and next steps are clearly documented.
- Identify and escalate QA risks, issues, blockers, and dependency gaps early with clear impact, recommended options, and management actions needed.
- Lead defect triage and coordinate resolution across application, integration, vendor, downstream, and business teams.
- Ensure traceability from requirements to test cases, test execution results, defects, and release readiness decisions.
- Prepare detailed QA status reports with measurable progress, defect metrics, accomplishments, upcoming activities, risks, issues, dependency status, and decision needs.
- Support release readiness, go/no-go preparation, stakeholder communication, production validation planning, and post-test lessons learned.
Required Skills and Expertise:
- Senior-level QA leadership experience supporting large-scale enterprise modernization, transformation, or complex system implementation programs.
- Proven ability to develop and execute QA strategies, test plans, test cases, test schedules, test data plans, and defect management processes.
- Extensive experience leading cross-functional QA teams across business, technology, vendor, upstream, and downstream stakeholders.
- Strong expertise in waterfall and hybrid delivery methodologies, including phase-based planning, formal test cycles, stage gates, signoffs, dependency management, risk mitigation, and executive reporting.
- Experience serving in senior QA leadership roles such as QA Lead, Test Lead, QA Manager, or Test Delivery Lead.
- Hands-on leadership of end-to-end QA delivery for large enterprise programs involving multiple system integrations and complex stakeholder environments.
- Expertise managing all testing phases, including system integration testing (SIT), regression testing, end-to-end testing, user acceptance testing (UAT) support, production readiness testing, and release validation.
- Strong knowledge of test management tools, including test case oversight, execution tracking, defect triage, risk visibility, reporting dashboards, and cross-team coordination.
- Experience developing automation testing strategies, implementing automation frameworks, and leveraging automation to improve regression coverage and delivery efficiency.
- Strong project management skills encompassing planning, milestone tracking, dependency management, risk and issue resolution, action item follow-up, and status reporting.
- Ability to influence and collaborate effectively across business SMEs, IT teams, vendors, product teams, project managers, and executive stakeholders.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present QA metrics, risks, progress, and recommendations to leadership.
- Highly organized, proactive, accountable, detail-oriented, and effective in driving delivery within complex, fast-paced, and ambiguous environments.
Desired Skills and Expertise:
- Experience testing SaaS platforms, including configuration testing, integration testing, release validation, vendor coordination, and service-level considerations.
- Exposure to AWS or other cloud platforms, with experience supporting environment readiness, connectivity, security, performance, and integration validation.
- Experience testing within large enterprise ecosystems involving downstream systems, interface dependencies, batch processing, data conversion, reconciliation, and production readiness activities.
- Mainframe or legacy system testing experience, including batch validation, regression testing, data comparison, interface testing, and impact analysis.
- Experience supporting modernization initiatives involving legacy-to-modern platform migrations, data conversion, integration redesign, and parallel-run validation.
- Background in automotive, finance, warranty, vehicle service contracts, claims, contract administration, dealer-facing systems, or other regulated industries.
Required Competencies:
- Waterfall QA Leadership: Ability to build structured QA plans, manage formal test cycles, validate entry/exit criteria, and support release sign-off.
- Hands-On Testing Expertise: Deep understanding of test coverage, test data, defect management, integrations, and downstream impacts.
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Ability to lead QA initiatives across business, IT, vendor, SaaS, cloud, and legacy platform teams.
- Automation Strategy: Practical application of test automation to improve quality, repeatability, and delivery confidence.
- Project Management Discipline: Strong ownership of plans, milestones, risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and action items.
- Executive Communication: Ability to deliver detailed QA status reporting with clear metrics, accomplishments, risks, blockers, and recommended actions.
- Delivery Ownership: Proactively identifies gaps, drives decisions, escalates issues appropriately, and ensures successful completion of deliverables.
