Job Title: Software Quality Engineering Director
Location: Deerfield, IL - Onsite
Duration: Contract
TechnicalFunctional Skills
The Director, Software Quality Engineering is an engineering transformation leader responsible for evolving quality from a testing function into an engineering capability. Rather than measuring success by automation coverage or the number of test cases executed, this role improves engineering effectiveness by building quality into software architecture, development, and deployment from the beginning.
This leader partners closely with Software Engineering, Architecture, Platform Engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Security, Product, and UX teams to improve testability, observability, reliability, deployment confidence, and developer productivity across Walgreens Digital.
The ideal candidate is first and foremost a software engineering leader who has successfully built or transformed engineering quality organizations. Candidates should have a strong software engineering foundation, with experience in areas such as backend development, distributed systems, APIs, middleware, cloud platforms, infrastructure, or software architecture before leading quality engineering organizations.
This leader will establish modern engineering practices including developer-owned quality, API-first validation, contract testing, service virtualization, CICD quality gates, continuous testing, and engineering observability. They will also help define how AI transforms software engineering through AI-assisted development, intelligent quality engineering, developer productivity, and defect prevention.
This position is based in Deerfield, Illinois, and follows a hybrid schedule of four days in the office and one remote day each week.
Basic Qualifications
Master degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
10+ years of software engineering, engineering quality, or SDET experience with progressively increasing technical leadership responsibilities.
2+ years leading engineering managers or senior technical leaders.
Strong software engineering background with experience building production software before leading quality organizations.
Experience influencing software architecture, distributed systems, APIs, engineering design, or platform engineering.
Experience integrating engineering quality practices into CICD pipelines at enterprise scale.
Demonstrated experience driving cross-functional engineering transformation.
Experience managing budgets, organizational planning, and engineering investments.
Willing to travel up to 10%.
Education Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline.
Engineering Leadership
Lead a high-performing Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) organization focused on engineering enablement rather than downstream testing.
Define and execute Walgreens Engineering Quality strategy aligned with enterprise software modernization and cloud transformation initiatives.
Establish the operating model for how SDETs partner with engineering teams to build quality into software rather than inspect quality after development.
Build organizational capability through hiring, coaching, mentoring, and succession planning for highly technical SDETs.
Engineering Quality
Influence software architecture and engineering design decisions to improve testability, reliability, observability, resilience, and long-term maintainability.
Drive engineering design reviews with a focus on APIs, service boundaries, dependency management, failure modes, and quality-by-design principles.
Establish engineering standards for developer-owned quality, unit testing, API-first testing, contract testing, integration testing, and production readiness.
Reduce reliance on end-to-end UI automation by improving engineering practices, system testability, and intelligent automation strategies.
Lead root cause analysis for escaped defects and drive systemic improvements that prevent recurrence.
Software Engineering Enablement
Build and maintain scalable engineering quality platforms, frameworks, and tools that improve developer productivity.
Ensure automation frameworks are treated as production-quality software with strong engineering standards for maintainability, versioning, performance, and reuse.
Partner with Platform Engineering and DevOps to integrate quality gates, automated validation, and continuous testing into CICD pipelines.
Establish engineering practices for test data management, environment strategy, service virtualization, and deployment confidence.
AI-Enabled Engineering
Define and drive the adoption of AI-assisted software engineering practices across the SDLC.
Evaluate emerging AI technologies for code generation, automated testing, code review, defect prevention, engineering productivity, and software delivery.
Help evolve the role of Quality Engineering as AI changes how software is designed, developed, tested, and released.
Metrics and Continuous Improvement
Define engineering quality metrics focused on defect prevention, deployment confidence, escaped defects, change failure rate, release quality, and engineering effectiveness.
Use data to identify systemic engineering issues and prioritize quality improvements.
Communicate engineering quality strategy, risks, and progress to senior technology leadership.
Roles & Responsibilities Within the first 12 18 months, this leader will:
Transform QE from a testing organization into an engineering enablement organization.
Increase developer ownership of quality throughout the software development lifecycle.
Improve software testability, observability, and deployment confidence through engineering design.
Reduce dependence on UI-heavy regression testing by strengthening unit, API, integration, and contract testing strategies.
Improve engineering productivity through AI-assisted software development and modern engineering workflows.
Establish engineering quality metrics focused on defect prevention rather than defect detection.
Generic Managerial Skills
Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline.
Experience leading Engineering Quality or SDET organizations supporting large-scale cloud-native platforms.
Experience transforming traditional QA organizations into engineering enablement organizations.
Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices, event-driven architectures, APIs, and cloud-native engineering practices.
Experience influencing principal engineers, architects, and senior engineering leaders through technical credibility.
Experience applying AI to software engineering, developer productivity, code quality, engineering workflows, or quality engineering.
Experience improving engineering effectiveness through testability, observability, quality-by-design, and modern software delivery practices
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