QA Lead

Our client is a leading global appliance company that has shaped living for the better for more than 100 years. They reinvent taste, care and wellbeing experiences for millions of people, always striving to be at the forefront of sustainability in society through their solutions and operations. Under their group of leading appliance brands, they sell approximately 60 million household products in more than 120 markets every year. They have employed 51000 people around the world.

Responsibilities:

Test Strategy & Planning: 

• Within its Product Area, develop and execute comprehensive test strategies that cover end-to-end test execution either for new feature or to rollout complex digital products. This includes Unit Tests, System Integration Testing (SIT), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and Smoke Tests, with an emphasis on quality, alignment with requirements, and overall test coverage.
• Hands-on Coordination & Test Execution: Lead and coordinate hands-on test execution activities, ensuring tests are performed on time, within scope, and to the highest quality standards. This includes driving functional and non-functional testing activities across the team. 
• Unblocking the team whenever needed, taking tactical discussions with multiple stakeholders.
• Drive main testing forums within its Product Area such as defect triage. Perform test execution at least 50% of their time.

Resource & Deliverable Accountability:

• while this is an individual contributor role, QALP will functionally manage Test Engineers to ensure test activities are executed successfully.
• Oversee resource planning, track test execution status, and ensure test deliverables are completed on schedule.
• Ensure that the test plan is followed, and any test issues are identified and resolved in a timely manner.

Acceptance Criteria & Sign-off: 

• Ensure all User Stories have acceptance criteria as part of DoR. 
• Define clear acceptance criteria for each test phase of Major initiatives and country rollouts for CDI solutions. 
• Ensure acceptance criteria are met prior to sign-offs forums, maintaining transparency with stakeholders and ensuring business objectives are met.

Timely Delivery: 

• Given the critical nature of delivery timelines, ensure all testing phases and deliverables are completed on time. 
• Manage any risks that could delay the testing process, collaborating with stakeholders to mitigate potential impacts to project timelines and company targets.

Collaboration & Cross-Functional Engagement: 

• Partner with Product Managers, Product Owners, Delivery Leads, Engineering Leads, and Tech Leads to ensure alignment on quality goals and testing requirements across multiple Agile Release Trains. 
• Functionally report to Delivery Leads on Major initiatives.

Test Process & Continuous Improvement: 

• Drive best practices in test processes, tools, and methodologies. 
• Ensure full adoption of testing tooling for planning, execution and reporting.
• Foster continuous improvement by regularly evaluating and optimizing the testing lifecycle to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

Reporting & Documentation: 

• Prepare and deliver comprehensive test execution status reports and communicate results and risks to key stakeholders.
• Maintain thorough documentation of test plans, results, defects, and other critical test artifacts

Test Data & Automation: 

• Together with Product Managers and Product Owners maintain the test data repository for their Product Area. 
• In addition to that, continuously identify potential candidates for test automation and collaborate with Tech Lead for QA Automation in order to prioritize tech enablers for upcoming PI-Plannings.

Requirements:

• Solid experience (5+ years) in driving test planning, particularly in a multiple technology domain such as E-commerce/CRM/ERP rollouts.
• Proven hands-on experience with end-to-end test execution, including SIT, UAT, and Smoke Tests.
• Exposure to both manual and automated test execution methods, including experience in driving test automation initiatives.
• Strong understanding of on-prem solutions, API integrations, and cloud-native solutions (AWS, Azure, etc.).
• Experience working in a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment and with Agile Release Trains is highly preferred.
• Ability to functionally manage Test Engineers, guiding them through testing phases while maintaining accountability for the overall test process.
• Strong knowledge of acceptance criteria and the ability to ensure that they are met at every stage of the testing process.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to work cross-functionally and influence stakeholders at all levels.
• Experience with test management tools (e.g., Jira, TestRail) and version control systems.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Certifications in Software Testing (e.g., ISTQB, SAFe) are a plus.
• Exposure to cloud-based testing and experience with tools like Selenium, JUnit, TestNG is advantageous.