Test Lead

Summary

We are looking for a Test Lead: a small, cross-functional quality team embedded with a development squad. You will be accountable for the test strategy, delivery coordination, quality governance, stakeholder communication, and release-readiness assessment. You will guide Functional Testers, QA Automation Engineers, API Testers, Mobile Testers, and Performance Testers, ensuring that the right level of specialist coverage is applied to project risks while aligning delivery with Testing Center of Excellence standards.

Key responsibilities

• Define the overall test strategy, scope, estimates, resource plan, entry and exit criteria, and quality risks.
• Translate project objectives and architecture into an integrated approach covering functional, automation, API, mobile, performance, and other applicable testing.
• Review requirements, dependencies, environments, test data, and release plans to identify readiness gaps early.
• Assign work, balance specialist capacity, monitor progress, and remove delivery blockers across the QA pod.
• Lead defect triage, quality-risk reviews, test completion assessment, and release-readiness recommendations.
• Ensure traceability, evidence, controls, templates, and approval records meet project and TCoE standards.
• Escalate material risks, unresolved defects, environment issues, and scope changes with clear impact and options.
• Provide clear status, metrics, forecasts, dependencies, and quality insights to product, technology, and business stakeholders.
• Coach QA team members, review test artifacts, and promote consistent engineering practices.
• Coordinate with development, architecture, DevOps, security, infrastructure, and business teams.
• Support demand planning, onboarding, knowledge transfer, and capability development within the pod.
• Track quality and productivity trends, identify root causes, and implement measurable improvements.
• Drive reuse of regression packs, automation assets, API collections, performance scripts, dashboards, and lessons learned.
• Contribute to TCoE standards, maturity assessments, capability roadmaps, and communities of practice.
• Lead Agile quality activities across refinement, planning, stand-ups, reviews, retrospectives, and release gates.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 6-8 years of software testing experience, including at least 2 years leading QA delivery or a test team.
• Strong experience in test strategy, planning, estimation, risk management, defect governance, and reporting.
• Working knowledge across functional, automation, API, mobile, and performance testing disciplines.
• Experience managing quality delivery in Agile, hybrid, or DevOps environments.
• Proficiency with test and defect management tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar.
• Strong stakeholder communication, facilitation, coaching, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Ability to assess release readiness using evidence, residual risk, and business impact.
• Experience leading or managed testing services in banking, financial services, insurance, or another regulated environment.
• Exposure to automation frameworks, CI/CD quality gates, observability, cloud platforms, and modern architectures.
• Experience with QA metrics, dashboards, service levels, capacity planning, and continuous improvement.
• Knowledge of TCoE governance, reusable asset management, and testing maturity models.
• ISTQB Test Manager, Agile Test Leadership, or related certification.