Senior Director - Quality Engineering

Responsibilities: Organizational Leadership & Strategy: - Define and execute the organization-wide QA and Quality Engineering strategy aligned with business objectives, engineering goals and product roadmaps. - Lead, mentor and grow a high-performing global QA organization across multiple teams, programs and delivery streams. - Establish departmental KPIs, operational objectives and quality metrics to measure product quality, release readiness, automation effectiveness and engineering efficiency. - Drive enterprise-wide quality initiatives including test automation modernization, shift-left testing, CI/CD quality integration and scalable test strategies. - Partner with senior leadership to prioritize investments, staffing and process improvements that improve product quality and engineering velocity. - Serve as the primary QA leader and escalation point for major quality initiatives, risks and production-impacting issues. - Build and maintain a culture of accountability, innovation, operational excellence and continuous improvement. - Lead organizational change management efforts related to quality engineering practices, tooling and processes. - Develop succession planning, career growth frameworks and mentorship programs for QA leadership and engineering staff. Team Management & Delivery Excellence: - Oversee QA planning, execution and delivery across multiple simultaneous programs ensuring alignment with organizational priorities and timelines. - Ensure products are released with high standards of reliability, scalability, performance and usability. - Provide executive-level communication regarding quality risks, release readiness, operational impacts and mitigation strategies. - Drive cross-functional alignment between QA, Engineering, Product Management, PMO, DevOps and Operations. - Improve organizational efficiency through optimized test planning, automation strategy, resource allocation and quality governance. - Lead hiring efforts and attract top-tier QA and Quality Engineering talent. - Foster collaboration, transparency and accountability across geographically distributed teams. Quality Engineering & Process Excellence: - Drive large-scale adoption of automated testing frameworks and modern quality engineering practices. - Champion quality automation strategies across UI, API, integration, data and infrastructure testing. - Oversee implementation and governance of enterprise QA tooling, frameworks and reporting systems. - Establish quality gates and automated validation within CI/CD pipelines. - Improve production stability by reducing defect escape rates and driving preventative quality practices. - Lead post-release quality reviews and operational RCA initiatives. - Evaluate emerging technologies, AI/ML-driven testing approaches and automation innovations to improve efficiency, coverage and defect detection. - Define and lead the organizations AI-enabled Quality Engineering strategy including leveraging AI-assisted test generation, intelligent test optimization, predictive defect analysis, autonomous testing approaches and AI-powered quality insights to improve engineering velocity and product reliability. - Drive adoption of AI tools and workflows across the QA organization to improve productivity, accelerate release validation, enhance root cause analysis and optimize test coverage. - Ensure effective management of test environments, test data and release validation processes. Cross-Functional Collaboration & Executive Influence: - Act as a strategic advisor to Engineering and Product leadership on quality-related risks, priorities and operational improvements. - Influence organizational decisions and engineering practices to ensure quality is embedded throughout product development. - Partner closely with DevOps and Infrastructure teams to strengthen observability, release quality and deployment reliability. - Facilitate alignment between technical and non-technical stakeholders by communicating quality strategies, tradeoffs and outcomes clearly. - Represent the QA organization in executive meetings, roadmap discussions and operational reviews. - Promote customer-focused quality practices by incorporating end-user feedback and production insights into quality initiatives. Requirements: - 12+ years of Quality Assurance and/or Quality Engineering experience including 7+ years in senior leadership or management roles. - Proven experience leading enterprise QA organizations across multiple products, platforms and engineering teams. - Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or equivalent practical experience. Advanced degrees are a plus. - Deep understanding of modern SDLC methodologies including Agile, DevOps and CI/CD. - Strong expertise in QA methodologies, software testing strategies, automation frameworks and release management practices. - Demonstrated success building and scaling enterprise-grade QA and Quality Engineering organizations. - Experience defining organizational quality strategy, metrics, governance and operational excellence programs. - Strong hands-on experience with modern automation frameworks and tools including Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, TestNG or equivalent. - Experience with API testing, performance testing and security testing methodologies and tooling. - Strong understanding of hybrid architectures and platforms including AWS and on-prem Datacenters. - Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or equivalent. - Strong experience with modern engineering and QA tools such as JIRA, Practitest, Postman, and related platforms. - Experience with version control systems such as Git/GitHub/GitLab. - Strong strategic thinking, analytical and problem-solving abilities. - Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive organizational change. - Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively to technical and executive audiences. - Strong leadership presence, negotiation skills and executive-level presentation capabilities. - Experience operating effectively in fast-paced, high-growth environments. - Strong quality mindset with exceptional attention to detail and operational rigor. Preferred: - Experience within OEM, Consumer Electronics, digital advertising, AdTech, media or related technology industries. - Advanced QA certifications such as CSQE, ISTQB Advanced or equivalent. - Experience architecting enterprise-level automation frameworks including data-driven, keyword-driven and hybrid testing frameworks. - Experience with service virtualization concepts and tooling. - Experience building testing frameworks for SDKs and distributed systems. - Advanced performance engineering expertise using tools such as LoadRunner, JMeter, NeoLoad, Locust or equivalent. - Experience implementing AI/ML-driven quality engineering, intelligent testing approaches and AI-assisted automation strategies. - Strong understanding of emerging AI technologies and practical applications of generative AI within software testing, automation, quality analytics and engineering productivity workflows. - Experience evaluating and integrating AI-powered QA tools for test case generation, defect prediction, test optimization, observability and release quality analysis. - Strong programming/scripting expertise in JavaScript (Node.js), Python and/or Java. - Experience managing globally distributed QA organizations and offshore teams. - Experience driving large-scale QA transformation initiatives and operational maturity programs.