Lead QA Analyst

Varsity Spirit, a Varsity Brands company, is the driving force in spirit across cheer, dance, band, and yearbook. For over 50 years, Varsity Spirit has been the leading global source for all things spirit, including cheerleading, dance team, performing arts, and yearbook. Focused on safety, entertainment, and traditional school leadership, Varsity Spirit’s 5,000+ employees are dedicated to celebrating school spirit. A leader in apparel innovation, educational camps, clinics, competitions, and yearbook, Varsity Spirit impacts more than a million athletes each year.

Our Commitment to Safety

At Varsity Spirit, the safety and wellbeing of the young people we serve is of the utmost importance. Since our inception 50 years ago, we have been—and remain—steadfastly committed to doing our part to create a safe and positive environment for our participants’ physical, emotional, and social development, and promoting an environment free from abuse and misconduct. Varsity has a zero tolerance for abuse in its programs, events, and associated business activities. Varsity is committed to reporting all suspicions, allegations, and incidents of abuse in full accordance with local laws and reporting requirements. Learn more at Our Commitment to Safety - Varsity.com.

About the Role

Varsity Brands is building a modern, unified digital platform that powers the full experience of sport and spirit, enabling seamless workflows across product configuration, ordering, fulfillment, and customer engagement. Delivering high-quality software is foundational to this platform, requiring disciplined quality engineering practices that ensure reliability, usability, and performance across every release.

Within Varsity Spirit, the Lead QA Analyst supports the Yearbook Technology team, which operates within a highly creative, "infinite-solutions" environment that supports the end-to-end Yearbook manufacturing lifecycle—from digital creation and customization through production readiness. The Lead QA Analyst helps ensure technology solutions meet quality standards while supporting flexible workflows that accommodate unique school-driven designs, seasonal production timelines, and manufacturing requirements. This role directly impacts the accuracy, reliability, and production readiness of content as it moves from digital platforms into physical production.

Responsibilities

• Leads quality engineering practices across complex initiatives
• Improves software quality through enterprise QA standards
• Drives release readiness and quality strategy
• Influences Product and Engineering decisions through quality expertise
• Builds scalable testing approaches that improve engineering effectiveness
• Mentors and develops QA talent
• Leads testing strategy across multiple products and initiatives
• Defines enterprise QA standards and best practices
• Designs comprehensive testing approaches for complex systems
• Oversees regression, integration, API, and automation testing efforts
• Partners with Product and Engineering leadership on release quality
• Champions automation and continuous testing practices
• Identifies systemic quality risks and recommends mitigation strategies
• Leads root cause analysis for significant production defects
• Coaches and mentors QA team members
• Drives continuous improvement across QA processes, tools, and methodologies

Key Performance Indicators

• Overall software quality
• Escaped defect reduction
• Automation adoption
• Release readiness
• Team productivity improvements
• QA process maturity
• Mentoring effectiveness

Requirements

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Technical Knowledge: Enterprise software architecture, software release management, quality engineering strategy, test automation frameworks, API testing, risk-based testing, CI/CD quality practices
• Technical Skills: Design enterprise testing strategies, lead automation initiatives, drive continuous improvement of QA processes, tools, and methodologies, analyze complex system interactions, evaluate release risk, drive root cause analysis
• Cognitive & Problem-Solving Abilities: Strong analytical thinking, root cause identification, risk assessment, attention to detail, ability to quickly adapt to changing priorities, technologies, and solution approaches, exercises sound judgment when evaluating enterprise quality risks, testing strategies, and release readiness
• Collaboration & Influence: Influences Product, Engineering, and Design decisions, builds strong cross-functional partnerships, mentors QA professionals, communicates quality strategy to technical and business stakeholders, drives alignment on quality standards across engineering teams
• Execution & Ownership: Leads quality assurance efforts across multiple concurrent initiatives, drives accountability for testing strategy, release quality, and delivery outcomes, balances competing enterprise priorities while ensuring software quality, champions continuous improvement across QA practices and engineering quality, influences quality outcomes through technical leadership and collaboration

Education, Certification, and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, or related technical discipline; or equivalent combination of education and experience
• 5–8+ years of professional software quality assurance, testing, or related technology experience
• Experience with Agile methodologies, including Scrum
• Experience with industry-standard testing and defect tracking tools, including Jira
• Experience leading testing for complex enterprise applications
• Experience mentoring QA professionals
• Experience with Agile delivery and automated testing practices

Preferred: Experience working within cross-functional Agile product delivery teams

Benefits

We are committed to putting you and your families first. For benefits-eligible roles, we offer a variety of choices and costs as well as program enhancements that align with our responsibility to elevate the employee experience. Some of our offerings include:

• Comprehensive Health Care Benefits
• HSA Employer Contribution / FSA Opportunities
• Wellbeing Program
• 401(k) plan with company matching
• Company-paid Life, AD&D, and Short-Term Disability
• Generous My Time Off & Paid Holidays
• Varsity Brands Ownership Program
• Employee Resource Groups
• Access to Financial Coaching and member-owned Credit Union
• St. Jude Partnership & Volunteer Opportunities
• Employee Perks including discounts on personal apparel and equipment

Our Values

• Service: We lead with heart. We champion community.
• Passion: We love what we do. It fuels our purpose.
• Integrity: We do what we promise. We own our actions and decisions.
• Respect: We earn it by giving it. Because everyone deserves it.
• Innovation: We never stop striving to be better. For ourselves and our community.
• Transparency: We are committed to openness and honesty in everything we do.

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.