Ralph Lauren Manager , Quality Assurance and Automation

About the role

The role involves leading end-to-end quality assurance for the Clienteling application and Online-to-Offline (O2O) capabilities. It is a hands-on leadership position based primarily in the Nutley, NJ lab, overseeing the QA process across the full store technology stack.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the end-to-end QA strategy for the Clienteling application and O2O features, covering functionality, regression, performance, security, and usability.
• Develop comprehensive test plans aligned to product roadmap milestones, store rollout schedules, and business acceptance criteria.
• Identify and assess quality risks early in the development cycle, partnering with Product and Engineering to surface issues before they reach store environments.
• Establish clear test estimation processes and communicate coverage, progress, and risk to project stakeholders through structured reporting and metrics.
• Lead end-to-end testing within the Nutley lab environment, simulating real-world store conditions including device-based testing on associate-facing hardware (tablets, POS terminals, handheld devices).
• Coordinate with QE resources across EMEA, APAC & India to manage the overall test execution across all markets.
• Oversee and execute functional testing for Clienteling features such as client profiles, outreach workflows, appointment scheduling, product recommendations, and Campaigns.
• Validate O2O capabilities including BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store), ship-from-store, endless aisle, and clienteling-triggered fulfillment flows.
• Conduct exploratory testing to uncover edge cases in store associate workflows and end-client-facing journeys.
• Coordinate occasional on-site store visits to validate features in live retail environments ahead of broader rollouts.
• Manage and mentor a team of QA engineers, assigning test coverage responsibilities, reviewing test results, and maintaining team velocity.
• Run structured QA ceremonies including test case review sessions, defect triage, and release sign-off meetings.
• Partner with Project Management, Product, Business Stakeholders, and Development teams to communicate testing progress with clear metrics and well-documented quality concerns.
• Build a quality-first culture within the store technology team, embedding QA engagement from requirements through deployment.
• Evaluate, implement, and maintain test automation frameworks suited to the Clienteling application's technology stack (web, mobile, and API layers).
• Implement and manage AI-driven test frameworks that detect application UI/API changes and automatically update scripts to minimize flaky tests.
• Use Gen AI tools to analyze system requirements and user stories to automatically generate comprehensive test scenarios including edge cases.
• Automate regression and smoke test suites for high-frequency release cycles, reducing manual effort for repetitive test scenarios.
• Integrate automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines to support continuous quality validation across testing, pre-production, and production environments.
• Drive tooling decisions that improve team efficiency without over-engineering - pragmatic automation over theoretical completeness.
• Own the quality metrics framework: defect density, open defect aging, test coverage, pass/fail rates, and regression health.
• Provide clear and consistent reporting to project stakeholders, with transparency on blockers, risk areas, and release readiness posture.
• Manage performance, regression, security, and compliance testing responsibilities, coordinating with relevant platform and security teams as needed.
• Maintain detailed test documentation including test plans, test cases, defect reports, and post-release quality summaries.
• Collaborate with DevOps and Engineering to improve testing environment stability and fidelity in the Nutley lab setup.
• Support deployment approval workflows, ensuring test environments accurately reflect production configurations for Clienteling and O2O features.
• Coordinate environment readiness for release windows aligned to store operating calendars and business peaks.

Requirements

• Multi-stack engineer with 8+ years of demonstrated experience in a breadth of development technologies and test automation frameworks.
• Proven experience testing retail, clienteling, POS, or commerce applications in a store or lab environment.
• Strong command of functional, regression, integration, performance, and exploratory testing techniques across web and mobile layers.
• Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks such as Selenium, Playwright, or Appium.
• Proficiency in one or more scripting languages - Python, Java, or JavaScript - applied to test development and automation.
• Experience with API testing tools (Postman, REST Assured, SoapUI) in microservices or service-oriented architectures.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or equivalent) and integrating automated test suites into deployment workflows.
• Experience validating AI-powered application features - including recommendation engines, next-best-action logic, and personalization outputs - with the ability to assess behavioral correctness, not just functional pass/fail.
• Practical use of AI-assisted tooling (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, or equivalent) to accelerate test case authoring, synthetic test data generation, and defect pattern analysis.
• Experience managing defects and test cases in tools such as JIRA, Zephyr, TestRail, or equivalent.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate technical quality findings into clear, business-facing reporting and release readiness assessments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 8+ or more years of work experience.
• A customer-first, quality-driven mindset that continuously challenges the status quo and drives action-oriented outcomes.