Manager, Quality Assurance (QA Manager)

Duties And Responsibilities

• Defines, owns, and continuously improves the end-to-end QA strategy across web, mobile-web, backend services, and integrations.
• Leads, mentors, and grows a team of QA specialists, automation engineers, and SDETs, fostering a culture of quality and accountability.
• Establishes and maintains QA standards, test plans, regression suites, smoke-test procedures, and release sign-off processes.
• Champions shift-left testing and embeds quality practices across the engineering organization.
• Identifies critical user journeys and high-risk areas, ensuring appropriate test coverage at each layer of the test pyramid.
• Sets the direction for automation frameworks across UI, API, and integration testing, and ensures suites are robust, maintainable, and trusted.
• Oversees integration of automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, and defines quality gates, deployment criteria, and rollback triggers in collaboration with DevOps.
• Owns release readiness and sign-off, ensuring consistent, repeatable, and low-risk deployments across Dev, QA, UAT, and Production.
• Defines, tracks, and reports on key quality metrics such as defect leakage, escape rate, test coverage, flakiness, MTTD, and MTTR.
• Provides clear, regular quality reporting and risk assessments to engineering leadership and business stakeholders.
• Manages relationships with external QA vendors and tooling providers, and contributes to build-versus-buy decisions.
• Analyzes production incidents to identify gaps in coverage and process, and drives corrective and preventive actions.
• Establishes and maintains quality governance, including audit readiness, compliance, and data-handling considerations relevant to the business.
• Evaluates and introduces new tools, technologies, and methodologies to advance the QA function.
• Provides project effort estimations and resource planning for QA activities across competing priorities.
• Communicates effectively with technical and non-technical groups, both internally and externally.
• Maintains current knowledge of relevant technology and quality engineering practices, as assigned.
• Participates in special projects, as required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree (BA/BS) from a four-year college or university, or seven or more years of related experience and/or training, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Seven or more years of professional QA experience, with at least three years in a lead or management capacity.
• Proven track record of building, leading, and scaling QA teams and functions.
• Computer skills required: Microsoft Office Suite; Project Management Software; Test Management and Defect Tracking Software (e.g., Jira); Database Software; Development Software; Internet Software; Spreadsheet Software; Word Processing Software; Electronic Mail Software; Presentation Software.
• Other skills required: Strong technical foundation in test automation, with hands-on experience in UI automation (Playwright, Cypress, or Selenium) and API testing tools (Postman/Newman, REST Assured, or Pact).
• Experience defining QA strategy and embedding quality practices across engineering organizations.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and integrating automated testing into delivery workflows (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar).
• Strong grasp of testing methodologies: TDD, BDD, the test pyramid, risk-based testing, and exploratory testing.
• Solid understanding of REST APIs, HTTP, authentication mechanisms (OAuth, JWT), and API contract testing.
• Experience with version control (Git) and code review practices.
• Strong experience with relational databases and writing SQL queries for data validation and analysis.
• Demonstrated people-management skills: hiring, mentoring, performance management, and resource planning.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (preferably Microsoft Azure), including app hosting, storage, networking, and security concepts.
• Experience embedding automated build, test, and deployment quality gates across multiple environments (Dev, QA, UAT, Prod).
• Experience with application monitoring, logging, and alerting in cloud environments (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, Grafana, Sentry).
• Performance and load testing experience with k6, JMeter, or Gatling is a plus.
• Security & Methodology: Knowledge of secure coding and application security principles (e.g., OWASP Top 10) and security testing fundamentals.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments; Scrum Master experience is a plus.
• ISTQB Advanced Level certification, or other relevant quality/leadership certification, is a plus.
• Experience managing QA in travel, hospitality, or other data-sensitive industries is a plus.

Additional Leadership Expectations

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Able to provide technical leadership and mentor team members.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate with and influence cross-functional teams.
• Able to balance multiple priorities and deliver high-quality outcomes on time.