Technical Quality Assurance Manager

Description The Technical QA Manager is responsible for the technical direction, governance and continual improvement of quality engineering across the organisation’s delivery areas. The role defines and maintains the overarching test strategy and ensures that quality engineering practices are practical, risk-based and integrated throughout the software delivery lifecycle. The Technical QA Manager provides direct technical leadership and support to QA Champions and Test Automation Engineers. The role ensures that team testing strategies, automation approaches, quality standards and release evidence are aligned, measurable and consistently applied. The purpose of the Technical QA Manager role is to: · Define, communicate and maintain the organisational test strategy and supporting quality engineering standards. · Enable QA Champions to define and operate effective team and product-area testing strategies. · Provide technical direction to Test Automation Engineers on automation strategy, framework design, coding standards, CI/CD integration, reusable components, maintainability, diagnostics, test data and execution reliability. · Ensure automated test execution is embedded into delivery pipelines and provides fast, reliable and actionable feedback. · Align functional, integration, regression, non-functional and release validation with product, technical and delivery risk. · Strengthen developer ownership of testing while providing appropriate governance, coaching and assurance. · Ensure AI-generated testing assets and automation code are reviewed critically before use. · Defining expectations for pipeline triggers, test execution, quality controls, test-result publication, diagnostic information and failure feedback. · Ensuring pipeline automation is reliable, maintainable and proportionate to product and release risk. · Improve release confidence through clear, evidence-based quality and automation reporting. · Reduce avoidable rework, escaped defects, flaky tests and dependency on manual regression testing. The Technical QA Manager should be able to: · Define and implement comprehensive, risk-based test strategies across multiple delivery areas. · Translate organisational quality objectives into practical engineering standards. · Demonstrate practical integration of automated tests into CI/CD pipelines. · Define effective pipeline execution, result visibility and failure-feedback approaches. · Provide credible technical leadership on modern test automation frameworks. · Work effectively with Playwright or equivalent test automation technology. · Review and guide maintainable automation code. · Understand automation developed using C#, Java or an equivalent object-oriented language. · Understand functional, integration, regression, API, user-interface and relevant non-functional testing approaches. · Assess the suitability of automation at different levels of a system. · Review automation framework design, test architecture and reusable components. · Evaluate automation maintainability, test data, environment dependencies and execution reliability. · Identify flaky, duplicated, low-value or overly expensive automated tests. · Analyse quality and automation evidence to identify systemic risks and improvement priorities. · Understand risk management, risk identification and risk-based testing. · Coach and influence QA Champions, Test Automation Engineers, developers and delivery stakeholders. · Communicate technical quality risks clearly to technical and non-technical audiences. · Challenge weak requirements, ineffective controls and poor automation practices constructively. · Use AI-assisted testing capabilities critically, with appropriate review, traceability and governance. The successful candidate should have: · Strong experience in software quality assurance, test automation and quality engineering. · Experience providing technical leadership across complex software delivery environments using kaban methodology. · Demonstrable experience integrating automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines. · Demonstrable experience improving the reliability and feedback value of pipeline-based automated testing. · Proven ability to define, implement and govern testing strategies. · Experience supporting other quality roles in applying testing strategies within delivery teams. · Practical experience with a modern automation framework. · Preferable experience with Playwright and Selenium. · Practical coding capability in an object-oriented programming language. · Experience designing, building or significantly improving maintainable test automation frameworks. · Experience reviewing automation architecture and test-code quality. · A good understanding of functional, integration, regression and release testing. · A good understanding of software delivery lifecycle and release governance. · A good understanding of risk management, risk identification and risk-based testing. · A proactive and improvement-focused approach. · The confidence to challenge poor quality or automation practices constructively. Desirable experience includes: · Experience with Azure DevOps pipelines. · Experience configuring automated test execution within build and deployment pipelines. · Experience publishing and interpreting automated test results within CI/CD tooling. · Experience implementing pipeline quality controls. The Technical QA Manager should be measured on: · Adoption and effectiveness of organisational testing strategy. · Quality and consistency of team and product-area testing strategies. · Effectiveness of support provided to QA Champions. · Effectiveness of technical direction provided to Test Automation Engineers. · Reliable automated test execution within CI/CD pipelines. · Faster, clearer and more actionable quality feedback to delivery teams. · Increased useful automated coverage in areas of meaningful product risk. · Reduced flaky, duplicated and low-value automated tests. · Improved maintainability of automation frameworks and test code. · Reduced dependency on repeatable manual regression testing. · Reduced escaped defects and avoidable rework. · Improved developer ownership of testing and quality. · Improved compliance with agreed Definition of Done expectations and release control processes. · Clear and evidence-based release-readiness reporting. · Timely escalation of significant quality and automation risks. · Improved collaboration between QA Champions, Test Automation Engineers and developers. · Demonstrable improvement in release confidence and testing effectiveness. · Success should not be measured only by the volume of tests automated. Measures consider automation value, reliability, risk coverage, feedback speed, maintainability and model.