Director of Quality Engineering and Automation

***Position is bonus eligible***

Prestigious Financial Institution is currently seeking a Director of Quality Engineering and Automation. Candidate will lead the functional and integration testing for applications with accountability for test strategy, test planning, execution, automation and governance. This role defines comprehensive quality engineering approach that ensures robust validation of business workflows, scenarios across multiple integrated systems ensuring functional and data coverage using industry leading practices and automation.

Responsibilities:

• Define and own end to end test strategy for Ovation applications, covering functional, integration and data validation needs.

• Lead system integration testing (SIT) and regression testing across multiple applications, ensuring optimal test coverage.

• Drive automation-first approach using Cucumber based automation framework for UI, API, batch and Kafka layers

• Establish and scale test data strategy, including synthetic test data approaches

• Ensure comprehensive testing coverage

• Works in an Agile team throughout the Lifecycle to collaborate on the analysis, design, development and testing

• Review User stories for the sprint with the users and get user approval before sprint is closed

• Actively participates in the Sprint planning session and assist in creating stories with robust acceptance criteria while helping identify missing or incomplete requirements

• Analyze the business requirements, understand the expectation from end user, review with Business Analysts/SMEs and design test scenarios

• Attend daily scrum standup and report testing issues

• Provide key inputs during retrospective meetings

• Lead Creation of test data, detailed test cases for validating business functions and regression testing

• Monitors and updates defect reports as needed to ensure timely problem resolution

• Oversee release testing readiness, environment readiness and entry/exit gate adherence

• Lead defect triage, root cause analysis, and drive defect prevention initiatives

• Conducts regression, integration, and systems testing on newly designed or modified applications/systems

• Govern quality gates, testing observability and metrics

• Performs application and project risk analysis and recommends quality improvements

• Assists production support by testing time sensitive defects and providing advice on system functionality

• Participate in the communication and analysis of test results and patterns, providing a feedback loop to requirements gathering, design and development teams

• Identify, evaluate, and recommend automation testing tools

• Provide accurate timelines to the stakeholders and make sure deadlines are met without effecting the quality of the product

• Be the point of contact for the responsible applications and provide support as needed

• Prioritize, assign and balance workload of the team as per the timelines

• Responsible for continuously improving the QA process and technologies
• Drive and maintain automation efforts across multiple areas
• Directs one or more team(s) responsible for design of test cases, automation and execution of testing

• Work with individual team members to understand their career interests and help them grow by providing guidance and mentorship
• Guide, mentor and help team members to grow using Individual Development Plan and other tools

Qualifications:

• [Required] Advanced knowledge of a development lifecycle and Quality Engineering under Waterfall and/or Agile methodologies

• [Required] Ability to manage small- and large-scale projects and ensuring team efficiency

• [Required] Broad-based knowledge of Lifecyle development, change control management, test planning, test and defect management

• [Required] Strong analytical skills with potential to display methods of testing highly sophisticated systems, progressively diagnose system defects, and clearly communicate project constituents, key findings and learnings

• [Required] Strong communication skills, written and oral, sound judgement and time management skills, ability to work effectively with clients (users), management and staff

• [Required] Highly motivated self-starter with creative problem-solving skills

• [Required] Ability to multitask and meet deadlines in a fast-paced Agile environment

• [Required] Able to handle multiple projects simultaneously

• [Required] Advanced experience with team leadership and development
• [Required] Experience with AWS cloud deployments and microservices and event driven applications
• [Required] Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or a related discipline or an equivalent combination of education and work experience
• [Preferred] Test management experience leading small to large projects and development of test plans
• [Required] Prior management experience of small to medium sized teams (5-20) with a track record of success
• [Preferred] 10+ years experience in combination of Quality Assurance, Project Management, or other

Technical Skills:

• [Required] Familiarity with BDD and TDD concepts as it relates to test automation

• [Required] SDLC and testing tools such as Jira, Jenkins, Cucumber, SpiraTest

• [Required] Highly motivated self-starter with creative problem-solving skills

• [Required] Relational databases and query tools. (SQL Server, Oracle and DB2)

• [Required] Automated testing tool experience (Selenium, RestAssured, Cucumber, )
• [Preferred] Programming/Scripting Experience/knowledge in any one language (Java, VB script, Python, SQL)