SAP S/4 Quality and Release Assurance Lead

Role : SAP S/4 Quality and Release Assurance Lead

Location : Houston, TX

Type : Contract or FTE

Role: SAP S/4 Quality and Release Assurance Lead

Own SAP S/4 release stability end to end and materially reduce production defect leakage and business disruption. This person is accountable for building and running a risk based testing strategy across SIT, UAT readiness, and regression, using tooling and automation intelligently, not waiting for others to tell them what to test.

Core responsibilities

• Own SAP release assurance end to end
  • Define and run the testing strategy across SIT, UAT coordination/readiness, end to end validation, and regression.
  • Establish true release gating inputs: what is covered, what is not, what is risky, what must not ship.
• Risk based test strategy and coverage
  • Build and maintain a prioritized regression pack (golden pack / P1-P4) aligned to critical business processes.
  • Ensure coverage maps to business outcomes, not just test counts.
• Change impact driven testing
  • Use Tricentis LiveCompare to analyze transports and impacted objects per release.
  • Convert impact analysis into an actionable test plan:
    • Map impacted objects to automated tests
    • Identify gaps explicitly
    • Drive manual execution only where automation is missing, with named owners and evidence
• Shift left without adding noise
  • Influence test completeness earlier in the cycle by reviewing SIT and UAT readiness:
    • Test data and master data readiness
    • End to end flow validation for high risk changes
    • Early identification of missing scenarios before the regression window
• Automation leadership (Tosca focused)
  • Lead creation and maintenance of high quality, stable automation suites in Tricentis Tosca.
  • Implement reliability improvements like self healing where practical, reduce flaky failures, increase unattended runs.
  • Drive automation expansion into gaps based on impact and risk, not random coverage growth.
• AI assisted acceleration with measurable outcomes
  • Apply AI where it changes throughput and accuracy:
    • Test case generation and review workflows
    • Faster script creation from test assets
    • Smarter selection of what to execute based on risk
  • Prove value with metrics and before/after baselines, not tool marketing.
• Defect governance and release reporting
  • Run defect triage operating rhythm with the right stakeholders and clear SLAs.
  • Produce crisp release level dashboards: risk summary, coverage, gaps, execution results, open defects, go/no-go recommendations.
• Stakeholder leadership
  • Partner tightly with SAP product owners, IT leads, release managers, and value streams.
  • Be the person leadership trusts when asked: why did we miss this, and how do we prevent it next time?

Required experience and skills

• 10+ years in SAP QA, release assurance, or ERP testing leadership (S/4 preferred).
• Strong understanding of SAP end to end processes and integration realities (Order to Invoice, P2P, OTC, Finance flows, tax, billing, etc.).
• Hands on expertise with Tricentis Tosca and enterprise regression automation patterns.
• Working knowledge of LiveCompare and impact analysis driven testing.
• Proven ability to design and run risk based testing and define regression packs aligned to critical business processes.
• Strong release governance mindset: gating, evidence, traceability, and executive ready reporting.
• Able to operate in a federated model and still drive outcomes through influence and clarity.

Nice to have

• Experience building QA COE models for large enterprises.
• Exposure to SAP test data management and master data readiness practices.
• Integration testing experience across middleware and downstream systems (APIs, EDI, reporting).
• Familiarity with AI enabled quality workflows, agentic test generation concepts, or test analytics.

Success measures (what good looks like)

• Reduced production defect leakage, especially high business impact incidents.
• Clear, repeatable release gating with explicit coverage and gap transparency.
• Higher automation execution reliability and increased unattended runs.
• Measurable improvement in cycle time to produce regression ready automation for new changes.
• Improved confidence from SAP leadership that releases are protected by a true test partner.

Tekshapers is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regards to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.