Quality Practice Leader

Job Description

Quality Practice Leader

The Quality Practice Leader drives a culture of quality and continuous improvement across the entire organisation through effective automation process reliability stakeholder engagement and alignment with organizational priorities. A balanced hands-on and strategic role requiring deep expertise in:

• engineering and test automation
• comprehensive understanding of software delivery processes
• mastery of testing complexities.

This role is pivotal in defining and overseeing enterprise-wide quality processes including test strategy and automation best practices to ensure consistent high-quality releases across diverse platforms and business applications. It combines hands-on involvement in shaping test plans for projects and programmes with strategic leadership that influences and guides testers and quality engineers through expertise collaboration and direction.

Strategy & Governance

• Define and maintain the enterprise-wide test strategy and develop a comprehensive roadmap that addresses foundational testing practices automation maturity and continuous improvement initiatives across all platforms and products.
• Establish implement and govern quality standards quality gates Definition of Done (DoD) and release criteria across both Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies.

Technical Leadership

• Work hands-on with test automation frameworks including Cucumber Jmeter Jest Postman Playwright and etc contributing to framework design code reviews and technical implementation (50% hands-on technical work).
• Lead the design and evolution of test automation architecture and best practices for web applications mobile APIs microservices and cloud-native solutions.
• Rationalise and consolidate testing tools across organisation.

Stakeholder Engagement & Change Management

• Collaborate closely with project and program teams to assess guide and oversee individual test plans ensuring alignment with organizational strategy sufficiency of coverage and delivery of quality outcomes.
• Engage with cross-functional stakeholders including engineering leads DevOps leads product managers and project management teams to align quality practices with business priorities.
• Drive change management initiatives to mature transform and establish quality practices across the organization navigating resistance and building buy-in through expertise and results.
• Champion a culture of quality throughout the engineering organization advocating for quality-first approaches in architectural decisions feature development and release planning.

Measurement & Risk

• Define track and report on comprehensive quality metrics and KPIs including test coverage automation coverage defect escape rates release quality and cycle time to engineering leadership.
• Assess risks in testing approaches across projects and provide strategic guidance to mitigate quality risks before production releases.

Leadership & Capability

• Influence and mentor quality engineers and testers across the organization building capability through coaching knowledge sharing and hands-on collaboration.
• Participate in technical forums architecture reviews and planning sessions to ensure quality considerations are integrated early in the development lifecycle.

Experience

• 8 years of hands-on engineering and quality engineering experience with demonstrated technical depth in test automation and software testing
• 3 years in practice leadership quality leadership or similar roles driving quality initiatives across multiple teams or organizations
• Deep expertise in test automation frameworks and tools including Cucumber Jmeter Jest Postman with proven ability to design and implement automation solutions
• Strong experience with Azure DevOps AWS cloud platforms microservices architecture and modern web technologies including React
• Demonstrated ability to balance strategic thinking with practical hands-on technical contribution in a 50-50 capacity
• Proven track record of influencing and leading without direct authority successfully guiding distributed teams toward quality excellence
• Experience working in both Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies with ability to adapt quality approaches accordingly
• Experience establishing quality gates Definition of Done release criteria and governance frameworks

Attributes

• Strong change management skills with experience maturing transforming or establishing quality practices in complex organizational environments
• Excellent collaboration and stakeholder management skills with ability to engage effectively with engineering leads DevOps product and project management
• Highly skilled and opinionated about testing approaches with ability to articulate and defend quality positions while remaining pragmatic
• Strong analytical skills with experience defining and reporting on quality metrics KPIs and using data to drive improvement
• Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate complex technical concepts to varied audiences

On Offer

• Melbourne CBD location
• Salary 235K250K super bonus
• Hybrid work