Senior Manager QA Engineering

Overview

The Senior QA Engineering Manager leads quality engineering strategy and execution across one or more product portfolios, owning both the technical direction of test automation and the people leadership of a QA engineering organization. This leader partners closely with engineering, product, and delivery teams to embed quality throughout the software lifecycle, builds and scales high-performing automation and QA team — including offshore and distributed talent — and drives a zero-defect culture through rigorous metrics, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement. The role blends hands-on technical leadership in test automation architecture, CI/CD, and AI-based testing with senior people-management responsibilities such as hiring, coaching, and career development.

Responsibilities

Quality strategy and automation leadership

• Define and own the test automation strategy across multiple products and portfolios, architecting scalable API-first and UI automation suites built on shared, reusable test libraries.
• Guide teams to evaluate and adopt new tools and technologies - including AI-based test automation frameworks, and RPA - to provide faster feedback to development teams.
• Establish the test strategy covering data management, pre-production/staging environments, system integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Drive CI/CD practices and cloud-based tooling (Azure/AWS) across the QA function.
• Oversee Quality Corrective Action Board (CAB) and Zero-Defect Planning (ZDP) processes; track defect leakage and lead root cause analysis (RCA) to continuously improve test coverage.
• Actively participate in sprint planning and estimation, providing effort and timeline estimates for automation and QA deliverables to support predictable, on-time releases.
• Define and report key quality metrics — including functional and automation test coverage, defect density, and test execution velocity — to drive data-driven quality decisions.

Team leadership and people management

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of QA and automation engineers and QA leads — including offshore and distributed staff — fostering an inclusive, high-performing culture.
• Own hiring, onboarding, performance management, career development, and retention for the QA engineering organization.
• Set clear goals, provide regular feedback, and manage team knowledge-building and cross-training across key applications.
• Act as a change agent, championing quality ownership and continuous improvement across the QA program.

Cross-functional partnership and reporting

• Partner with product management, engineering, delivery, and operations to translate roadmap priorities into achievable, quality-driven engineering plans.
• Develop effective relationships with key stakeholders — product owners, agile managers, business analysts, delivery teams, and technical working groups.
• Produce sprint-level activity reports and quality metrics for senior management; support release-readiness reporting and relevant New Product Development (NPD) phases.
• Communicate technical strategy, quality status, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12 or more years of overall IT/software experience, including 10 or more years leading automation or QA engineering teams and 5 or more years of direct people management.
• Strong hands-on experience in Java and exposure to Python, with proven ability to architect and scale automation suites spanning API test automation (primary) and UI test automation, built on shared, reusable test libraries.
• Proficiency with RestAssured, TestNG, Playwright, and BDD-Cucumber, along with CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins, Gitlab, Nexus, and Maven.
• Experience with AI-based test automation and applying AI-driven development lifecycle (AIDLC) practices to accelerate test design, execution, and maintenance.
• Exposure to AWS cloud technologies and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience in healthcare, payer, or other regulated, data-intensive domains, including deidentified, HIPAA-compliant test data practices; US healthcare and EDI (e.g., X12/HIPAA transactions) knowledge is a plus
• Familiarity with data analytics platforms or machine learning systems is a plus.
• Strong understanding of Agile methodology and quality management best practices.

Skills and competencies

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence a wide range of audiences and win support without formal reporting authority.
• Strong organizational skills and adaptive to rapidly changing priorities and workloads.
• Comfortable partnering with remote and distributed team members across the US, India, and other geographies, within a matrixed organization.
• Results-oriented, empowering leader with strong emotional intelligence and a demonstrated ability to coach and develop talent.
• Innovative and self-motivated, with a strong sense of urgency and quality ownership.
• Exhibits behaviours consistent with Cotiviti values: Customer Driven, Accountability, Open, Collaborative.