Quality Assurance Lead - Automation Testing - IT/Software Services

About the company: We are calling candidates on behalf of a Software Solutions company headquartered in East Brunswick, NJ. Incorporated in 2003, it provides a comprehensive range of solutions in the area of GRC, Technology, Procurement, Healthcare Provider and Oracle to customers across the globe. Combining our unparalleled experience of over a decade in the software industry and global reach, we have grown with extensive capabilities across industry verticals. About the Role: We are looking for a strategic, hands-on QA Tech Lead to own and grow our quality engineering function. You will combine deep testing expertise with strong leadership. You will mentor the QA team, shape our automation and test management practices, and lead the adoption of AI tools that make quality work faster and smarter. Key Responsibilities: Quality Leadership & Strategy: - Define and own the overall QA strategy, test approach, and quality standards across products. - Work closely with Product, Engineering, and DevOps to embed quality early in the lifecycle (shift-left), including requirement reviews and acceptance criteria definition. - Plan QA effort, estimate testing scope, and manage risk for releases. - Define and track quality metrics such as defect leakage, escape rate, automation coverage, and test cycle time. Use them to drive continuous improvement. - Contribute to hiring and onboarding QA team members. Manual & Exploratory Testing: - Lead functional, regression, integration, and UAT testing efforts. - Champion exploratory testing through well-defined test charters and session-based testing. - Perform deep-dive testing on complex business workflows, edge cases, and high-risk areas. - Create and maintain structured test plans, test cases, and test strategies. - Review and approve test artifacts produced by the team. Test Management: - Administer and optimize Qase as the team's primary test management platform. - Establish standards for test case structure, tagging conventions, suite organization, and traceability to requirements. - Integrate Qase with issue tracking and CI/CD pipelines so test results and defects are reported automatically. - Build and present QA dashboards and release-readiness reports to stakeholders and leadership. Test Automation (Playwright): - Architect, build, and maintain a scalable end-to-end automation framework using Playwright (TypeScript/JavaScript preferred). - Define an automation strategy covering UI, API, and cross-browser testing, guided by the test pyramid. - Integrate automated suites into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps) with reliable reporting and parallel execution. - Set coding standards, lead automation code reviews, and actively reduce flaky tests. - Set and drive automation coverage targets to steadily reduce manual regression effort. - Stay hands-on, contributing automation code alongside the team. AI-Enabled Quality Engineering: - Use Claude (Anthropic) and other AI tools in daily QA work, including: generating test cases, exploratory charters, and edge case ideas, producing test data, summarizing defects and drafting root cause analyses, assisting with automation code. - Develop and share prompt engineering best practices and reusable prompt libraries for QA use cases. - Set guidelines for responsible AI use, including validating AI-generated output, protecting sensitive data, and knowing when human judgment is essential. Nice to Have: - Exposure to performance testing (k6, JMeter) or security testing fundamentals. - Experience with visual regression, accessibility (WCAG), or mobile testing. - Familiarity with Docker, cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), and test environment management.