Product Owner QA / Test Automation
Chicago, IL | Hybrid | 12-Month Contract
No C2C, 1099, third-party agencies, or third-party candidates will be considered.
Position Summary
We are seeking a Product Owner with a strong QA/software testing background to drive the vision, roadmap, backlog, and delivery of testing capabilities, quality tooling, and QA process improvements across a large engineering organization.
This role will partner closely with QA engineers, software developers, DevOps engineers, release teams, and business stakeholders to improve test automation, testing platforms, quality processes, and overall software delivery.
The ideal candidate has experience working with software testing teams, understands Agile product ownership, and has working knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, release processes, and environment management.
Key Responsibilities
- Own and manage the product backlog for testing tools, frameworks, and quality initiatives.
- Define and prioritize features related to:
- Test automation
- Test data management
- Test environment stability
- Quality reporting and metrics
- Gather requirements from engineering, QA, release, DevOps, and business stakeholders.
- Translate business and technical requirements into clear user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Prioritize the backlog based on business value, technical dependencies, quality needs, and delivery priorities.
- Partner with QA, development, and DevOps teams to improve quality practices throughout the SDLC.
- Drive continuous improvement of testing processes, automation coverage, and release confidence.
- Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
- Track quality metrics including defect leakage, test coverage, automation success rates, and release readiness.
- Help coordinate test environments and identify dependencies within CI/CD workflows.
- Assist with prioritizing issues involving build pipelines, test execution reliability, and deployment readiness.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for testing-related product decisions and roadmap alignment.
- Identify and manage risks, dependencies, priorities, and delivery blockers.
Required Qualifications
- 2 4 years of relevant experience in a Product Owner, Business Analyst, QA Lead, or similar role within a software delivery environment.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
- Experience managing and prioritizing a product backlog.
- Strong understanding of Agile/Scrum product ownership.
- Experience writing user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Good understanding of software testing concepts, including:
- Functional testing
- Regression testing
- Integration testing
- Automated testing
- Strong knowledge of QA and software testing processes.
- Familiarity with test management and defect-tracking tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, TestRail, or similar.
- Basic understanding of DevOps and CI/CD.
- Strong stakeholder communication and requirements-gathering skills.
- Strong prioritization and decision-making abilities.
- Experience managing risks and dependencies.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with DevOps practices and tools.
- Understanding of CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or similar tools.
- Familiarity with Git or other source-control systems.
- Understanding of environment management, deployment workflows, and release coordination.
- Exposure to test automation technologies such as:
- Selenium
- Cypress
- Playwright
- Postman
- API automation frameworks
- Experience working with quality dashboards, reporting, and release metrics.
- Experience in large enterprise, regulated, or fast-paced software delivery environments.
- Knowledge of release management and quality gates.
Work Environment
This is a hybrid position based in Chicago, IL. The current expectation is approximately 2 days in the office, with the possibility of increased onsite requirements in the future.
Candidates who are not currently local must be willing to relocate at their own expense and be available to work onsite beginning on their first day.
Employment Eligibility: This position is available on a W-2 basis only. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship. No C2C, 1099, third-party agencies, or third-party candidates will be considered.
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