Software Quality Engineering Lead

A Fortune 500 client is seeking a Software Quality Engineering Lead to help lead Quality Engineering for a major enterprise initiative focused on consolidating timekeeping systems across multiple locations and platforms. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who can partner closely with business and technology teams, establish testing practices in a largely manual environment, and build scalable automation from the ground up. The role will be approximately 60% strategy, collaboration, and technical leadership and 40% hands-on testing and automation. What You’ll Do * Lead end-to-end test strategy across complex enterprise applications and system integrations. * Partner with business stakeholders, developers, Product, Architecture, and DevOps to identify risks and build quality into the SDLC. * Help transition a primarily manual testing environment toward automated testing. * Design, build, and enhance reusable test automation frameworks. * Perform hands-on testing across web applications, APIs, data, integrations, and enterprise platforms. * Support functional, integration, regression, system, performance, accessibility, and security testing. * Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines. * Lead test planning, defect management, risk assessment, quality metrics, and release-readiness activities. * Provide technical direction and mentorship to 1-2 Quality Engineers. * Help introduce AI-assisted testing practices for test design, automation development, test data, and defect analysis.

• 8+ years of Software Quality Engineering, QA, or software testing experience.
• Strong experience leading complex testing or Quality Engineering initiatives.
• Hands-on automation experience with at least one framework such as Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, Tosca, or Cucumber.
• Programming/scripting experience with TypeScript, Java, or C#.
• Strong experience with system and integration testing.
• Experience testing web applications, APIs, data, and enterprise applications.
• Knowledge of Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, SDLC, risk-based testing, and defect management.
• Experience with tools such as Azure DevOps Test Plans, Jira, Postman, Rest Assured, and SQL.
• Strong communication and consulting skills with the ability to work directly with both business and technical stakeholders.
• Workday, ERP, HCM, timekeeping, or workforce-management experience.
• Experience building QA/QE processes or automation in an environment starting from a largely manual testing model.
• Experience testing complex enterprise integrations and applications containing sensitive employee or PII data.
• Experience with enterprise testing modernization or a Testing Center of Excellence.
• Familiarity with generative AI and AI-assisted testing practices.