Quality Assurance Architect

As a QA Architect, you will serve as both the hands-on technical expert and transformational thought leader for Product Quality assurance, reporting to the QA Manager and providing strategic guidance and mentorship to approximately 10 QA engineers across both manual and automation disciplines. This position focuses on technical leadership and process excellence rather than people management - you will have no direct reports but significant influence over quality standards, team culture, and strategic direction.

You will be joining a team that needs transformation from task-oriented execution to strategic quality thinking. We are looking for someone who can see the forest, not just the trees - someone who questions 'why' not just 'what' and can elevate a team from following procedures to driving quality innovation. You'll be accountable for driving quality excellence across multiple scrum teams while also rolling up your sleeves to build, maintain, and execute testing of our Equity Management SaaS Application.

You will lead by example, actively participating in hands-on work while simultaneously challenging existing processes and driving innovative approaches. You'll be responsible for planning, designing and building test artifacts, developing and executing tests for new features, enhancements, and fixes, while also transforming how the team thinks about quality's role in business success.

You will be a great fit for this position if you combine deep technical expertise with visionary thinking - someone who can execute at the highest level while inspiring others to think beyond their individual tasks and see quality as a strategic business driver.

Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategic Vision:

• As the senior technical leader and transformational change agent, drive quality assurance initiatives and elevate technical excellence
• Partner with QA Manager to design, implement, and drive continuous improvement in QA processes and methodologies
• Transform team mindset from reactive testing to proactive quality advocacy and strategic business thinking
• Challenge existing processes and drive innovative approaches to quality assurance that impact business outcomes
• Lead by asking the right questions, not just providing answers - help the team understand 'why' behind their work
• Mentor and develop QA engineers across manual and automation disciplines, fostering critical thinking and strategic quality perspective
• Drive technical standards and best practices across the QA organization while building a culture of continuous improvement

Hands-On Technical Execution:

• Define & document test plans, test cases and execute tests for each assigned work item
• Collaborate with cross functional teams to understand and identify appropriate testing criteria
• Identify test conditions, both positive and negative, from User Stories, Product Backlog Items, and other requirements documents
• Execute test cases, document results, update progress and track bugs
• Implement and maintain Automated Test Infrastructure and Test Suites
• Align automation with the speed of development. Make informed decisions on what, how, and when to automate vs manually test
• Design and execute non-functional testing (e.g., performance, security and accessibility) by using standard testing techniques

Collaboration & Process Participation:

• Participate in daily stand-ups, sprint planning and retrospectives, and other meetings as needed
• Operate in an agile development team and participate in the design, development, testing, and debugging of applications
• Review work items to estimate and work alongside senior engineers to propose testing solutions

Qualifications

Total experience

• Minimum 10+ years of hands-on commercial software testing experience, with at least 5 years focused on SaaS applications

Leadership & Experience:

• 3+ years of experience providing technical leadership and mentorship to QA teams of 8+ engineers, including both manual and automation specialists
• Demonstrated ability to transform team culture and elevate thinking beyond tactical execution to strategic quality ownership
• Proven track record of driving organizational change and challenging status quo approaches to achieve measurable improvements
• Experience connecting quality initiatives to business impact and articulating value to stakeholders
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, or equivalent work experience (preferably in Product companies)

Core Technical Skills:

• 8+ years of experience with defining & documenting manual functional and non-functional testing
• Minimum 5+ years coding experience in C# and SQL (our core tech stack)
• Minimum 5+ years of experience in writing solid test automation frameworks
• 8+ years of experience with testing REST APIs (Postman, Curl)
• Experience with additional programming languages and automation frameworks is a plus
• Proven track record in performance optimization of test infrastructure and automated testing frameworks
• Experience with performance and load testing

Technical Knowledge & Methodologies:

• Solid foundation of QA methodologies, testing techniques and software development processes in an agile environment
• Solid understanding of the Agile SDLC
• Minimum 5+ years of experience using Selenium WebDriver (our current automation framework)

Tools & Systems:

• Experience using JIRA, XRAY, ALM or other test management tools
• Experience using TFS, JIRA, GIT, Jenkins or other CI/CD tools

Communication & Transformation:

• Strong communication skills -- written and verbal -- with ability to influence and inspire strategic thinking
• Proven influencing and mentoring skills with ability to drive cultural transformation through technical expertise and vision
• Experience elevating team performance by helping individuals see beyond their immediate tasks to understand broader business impact
• Strong collaboration skills -- experience working in a small-team environment while driving change

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with cloud technologies (Azure/AWS) is a plus
• Experience in US-based Equity Compensation or other financial domain is a differentiator

  Role & responsibilities

Preferred candidate profile