Manager Software Quality Engineering & Product Operations

We are Optimum, a leader in the fast-paced world of connectivity, and we’re seeking driven and enthusiastic professionals to join our team, empower lives, fuel businesses, and drive innovation. Connectivity is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. A career at Optimum means you’ll be enabling progress and enhancing lives by providing reliable, high-speed connectivity solutions that keep the world connected. Our successes, now and in the future, are powered by our amazing product, a commitment to our people and culture, and the connections we make in our communities.

If you are resourceful, collaborative, and passionate about delivering consistent excellence, Optimum is for you! Job Summary

Optimum is seeking a Manager of Quality Engineering & Product Operations to lead a team that elevates product quality through modern Quality Engineering practices, with a strong emphasis on test automation, engineering tooling, and development-aligned delivery.

This role sits within Product Operations and bridges UAT, product quality, and software test automation across residential and business value streams - video, broadband, voice, mobile, customer applications, B2B services, and care/field experiences. The manager builds and coaches a team that reduces manual testing over time, embeds quality earlier in the development lifecycle, and partners with Product, Engineering, and Customer Operations to improve launch readiness and post-launch reliability.

The role also connects Operational Readiness Testing, UAT, Product Trials and Beta, launch readiness, and post-launch product health so quality findings translate into clear release decisions and future product improvements.

A successful candidate combines people leadership with hands-on Quality Engineering credibility: automation strategy, CI/CD-aware testing, data-driven quality decisions, and the ability to transform how teams validate and release products. Responsibilities

• Define and execute a Quality Engineering and test automation strategy for owned product domains.
• Lead the design, build, and maintenance of automated test frameworks and tools across residential and business products.
• Partner with Engineering to integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish measurable automation and pipeline Key Results (e.g., automated coverage, flaky-test rate, mean time to validate, escaped defect rate) and drive accountability.
• Use and customize developer and observability tooling to instrument test systems, monitor quality signals, and improve feedback loops for development teams.
• Drive proof-of-concepts and prototypes to evaluate automation architectures, frameworks, and tooling tradeoffs before scaling.
• Prioritize and systematically reduce technical debt in test suites, frameworks, environments, and quality tooling.
• Introduce and mature controlled release validation capabilities.
• Act as an advocate for Quality Engineering and test automation across Product Operations and partner engineering teams.
• Manage end-to-end acceptance and validation cycles across multiple value streams, shifting from purely manual UAT toward risk-based, automation-assisted Quality Engineering.
• Lead the team in defining acceptance criteria, test scenarios, exit criteria, defect triage, and go/no-go recommendations grounded in evidence.
• Ensure rigorous testing and validation processes so releases meet acceptance criteria and reliability expectations before launch.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to refine requirements, story/acceptance criteria quality, and coverage gaps using modern SDLC practices.
• Coordinate launch readiness across environments, test data, automation suites, and cross-team dependencies.
• Ensure validation covers complete customer and frontline journeys, including installation, activation, usage, support, troubleshooting, recovery, and service restoration.
• Optimize product operations and quality processes for Optimum residential and commercial services, including broadband, video, voice, mobile, customer applications, and B2B offerings.
• Collect, analyze, and act on product performance, defect, pipeline, and customer feedback data to improve quality and operational efficiency.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Field Operations, Care, IT, and Marketing to resolve systemic issues, drive root-cause remediation, and improve long-term service stability.
• Identify broken handoffs, unclear ownership, and outdated workflows; implement scalable process and tooling fixes across teams.
• Track product and quality KPIs/SLAs, incident trends, and automation health; lead initiatives that reduce service disruptions and defects escaping to production.
• Ensure findings from automated testing, ORT, UAT, Product Trials, Care, Field, incidents, and customer feedback have clear ownership and are incorporated into future product and operational improvements.
• Supervise a team of Quality Engineering / Product Operations professionals, providing mentorship, coaching, workload prioritization, and performance management.
• Build team capability in programming/scripting for test automation, modern test design, CI/CD practices, and product domain knowledge.
• Identify launch and operational risks early; develop mitigation strategies and escalate with clear options and data.
• Support executive-level reporting and dashboards covering automation progress, UAT/validation health, defect trends, and operational quality performance.
• Provide regular updates to stakeholders on Quality Engineering roadmap, release readiness, and strategic quality initiatives.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.
• 8+ years in Quality Engineering, software test automation, software development, product operations, or related engineering/quality leadership roles; telecom or large-scale technology experience preferred.
• 5+ years of people management experience
• Experience managing or formally leading people, ideally including engineers, automation developers, or quality professionals
• Hands-on experience building or leading test automation frameworks and reducing reliance on manual testing.
• Working knowledge of programming or scripting used in test automation, with the ability to guide technical contributors and evaluate automation approaches.
• Working knowledge of software development lifecycle methodologies, Agile/scrum delivery, and DevOps practices.
• Experience integrating automated tests with CI/CD pipelines and using tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Qase.
• Strong root-cause analysis, defect triage, and quality process design skills.
• Analytical, data-driven mindset with the ability to translate pipeline, defect, and customer insights into prioritized action.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to articulate technology vision and quality outcomes to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred

• Experience implementing or optimizing CI/CD pipelines and quality gates at scale.
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., Google Cloud or AWS) and modern developer tooling.
• Background leading both acceptance/UAT practices and automation strategy in a product organization.
• Strong understanding of cable/internet and adjacent service delivery (DOCSIS, Fiber/FTTH, IPTV, Wi-Fi) and how quality issues manifest for customers and frontline teams.
• Familiarity with B2B connectivity/network/security/communications services and residential product ecosystems.

• Experience with BI/analytics tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI) for quality and operational reporting. Comfort working with production systems for careful debugging and validation, with appropriate safeguards.

• Experience contributing to engineering/quality standards, documentation systems, and reusable frameworks.
• Knowledge of AI applications such as Cursor, ChatGPT, or GitHub Copilot to accelerate test design, automation development, and documentation is a plus.

Pay is competitive and based on a number of job-related factors, including skills and experience. The starting pay rate/range at time of hire for this position in the posted location is $123,379.00 - $202,694.00 / year. The rate/range provided herein is the anticipated pay at the time of hire and does not reflect future job opportunity.

At Optimum, every action and interaction we take part in, is driven by our three Guiding Principles: Do What’s Right, Drive One Optimum, and Make It Happen. These aren’t just words, they help us build trust, create real community, and embrace new ways of thinking. Our employees are empowered to do the right thing for our customers and co-workers and to recognize and reward these behaviors when we see them. It’s all part of the bigger picture of “Be The Difference” where each employee knows they have the power to enact real change, share new ideas, and understand that learning never stop.

If you have the drive to succeed and are ready to embark on a thrilling career, seize this opportunity today, and join our winning team. Together, we’ll shape the future of connectivity.