Lead QA Engineer Job Description

I have recently been working on a series of job descriptions and I thought I would share some of the details about the job description for the Lead QA Engineer.

The Lead Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer is primarily responsible for testing all software products—built in-house, purchased and installed locally, or configured in the cloud. The Lead QA Engineer partners with internal stakeholders to plan, test, and implement all software changes to ensure that products conform to the desired quality standard.  This role requires strong technical skills and the aptitude required to identify and resolve critical issues. The Lead QA Engineer uses technical programming expertise to build automated and performance tests.  The individual will be expected to contribute towards the organizational goal of continuous process improvement.  This role requires strong communication and the ability to lead a small programming team of QA Engineers.  The Lead QA Engineer will help establish automated and performance testing industry best practices and processes in the QA organization. This role requires an individual who is a software testing subject matter expert and a testing certification. Under the leadership of the Director of Testing, (s)he will define clear goals, measurements, and benchmarks to support IT strategies and advance quality in IT.

Responsibilities include:

• Manage a small team of automated or performance programming QA Engineers.
• Develop automated testing strategy or performance testing strategy.
• Prioritize automated test scripts or performance scripts and executes according to plan.
• Develop automated test scripts to automate manual repeatable test cases.
• Create and maintain automated or performance scripts using C++, JAVA, and/or VBScript.
• Create new test data or leverage existing test data for automation or performance scripts.
• Identify, log, and track defects to closure.
• Provide reporting on defect tracking and escalate technical issues as needed.
• Develop and maintain testing standards, procedures, and guidelines to ensure consistent testing procedures.
• Partner with distributed teams, outside vendors or offshore testing partners.
• Follow standards in accordance with company policy and regulation (SOX, Lean, Six Sigma, etc.).

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor’s in computer science or equivalent.
• 7+ years programming experience with C++, JAVA, VB, and SQL.
• 7+ years experience testing applications in accordance to required functionality. and non-functional quality attributes (e.g. availability, performance).
• IT testing certification (CSTE or CSQA).
• Master’s degree in computer science is a plus.
• Experience writing automated or performance test plans.
• Experience writing automated or performance scripts.
• Expert understanding of the IT project and software development lifecycles.
• Experience with automated functional GUI test tools (e.g. HP QuickTest Professional, Borland SilkTest, Selenium) or with programming languages (e.g. C, C++, Java, VB).