QA Lead

About the role

This QA Lead role at Talentgrator focuses on elevating the quality assurance function across multiple development teams. The successful candidate will be responsible for defining and implementing comprehensive QA strategies, establishing testing scopes, and setting quality standards. This involves active participation in the entire software development lifecycle, from initial planning and requirements analysis through to release readiness, ensuring that quality is embedded at every stage.

A key aspect of this position is leadership and mentorship within distributed QA teams. The QA Lead will guide and develop engineers, conducting technical interviews and fostering professional growth. This includes building and maintaining essential testing documentation, analyzing quality metrics to pinpoint areas for improvement, and contributing to the investigation and resolution of production incidents to prevent recurrence.

The role also emphasizes driving continuous improvement in engineering and QA practices, with a specific focus on integrating automation into the overall testing strategy. Collaboration with Product, Engineering, and other stakeholders is crucial for success, ensuring that QA efforts align with broader business objectives and contribute to a high-quality product delivery.

Skills that matter here

• QA processes: This role requires driving and continuously improving existing QA processes, standards, and testing approaches across multiple teams.
• testing strategies: The QA Lead will define and implement comprehensive testing strategies, including scope, quality standards, and risk assessment.
• API testing: Solid experience with manual API testing using tools like Postman or Swagger is required, along with an understanding of API contract testing.
• SQL: The role involves analyzing database schemas and writing SQL queries to validate transactional data.
• Agile methodologies: A strong understanding of Agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban is necessary for collaborating within development teams.
• Jira: Experience with Jira for project tracking and management is expected, alongside other test management tools.

Who this role suits

• A leader who enjoys mentoring and developing distributed QA engineers.
• Someone who thrives on defining and implementing strategic improvements to quality assurance processes.
• An individual who is analytical, capable of using metrics to identify and drive continuous improvements.
• A collaborative professional who can work effectively with product, engineering, and other stakeholders across the SDLC.

From the employer

• Drive and continuously improve QA processes, standards, and testing approaches across multiple teams.
• Define and implement QA strategy, testing scope, quality standards, and risk assessment.
• Participate in planning, requirements analysis, estimation, and release readiness.
• Build and maintain testing documentation, including test strategies and quality standards.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and other stakeholders throughout the SDLC.
• Lead distributed QA teams, mentor engineers, support their professional development, and conduct technical interviews.
• Collect and analyze quality metrics to identify improvement opportunities.
• Participate in production incident investigation and root cause analysis.
• Drive continuous improvements in engineering and QA practices across teams.
• Support the integration of automation into the overall QA process and testing strategy.

• 3+ years of experience in a QA Lead or similar leadership role.
• Proven experience improving QA processes and implementing quality standards.
• Strong experience defining testing strategies across multiple teams and services.
• Strong knowledge of test design techniques and software testing methodologies.
• Experience with functional, integration, regression, smoke, exploratory, and acceptance testing.
• Solid experience with manual API testing using Postman, Swagger, or similar tools.
• Experience analyzing database schemas and writing SQL queries to validate transactional data.
• Understanding of event-driven architectures (Kafka, message queues) and API contract testing.
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, and test management tools such as TestRail, Zephyr, or Xray.
• Familiarity with logging and monitoring tools (Kibana, Grafana, ELK).
• Experience integrating automation into QA processes.
• Strong understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban).
• Experience leading distributed QA teams, mentoring engineers, and supporting their professional development.
• Experience participating in production incident investigation and root cause analysis.
• Strong analytical, communication, organizational, and leadership skills.
• English level B2 or higher.
• Nice to have: Experience with gaming or transactional systems. Experience with high-load distributed systems. Experience building QA processes from scratch. Experience with performance or load testing. Background in test automation.

• 20 vacation days and 5 family days yearly.
• Flexible start to the workday.
• Support from a professional corporate coach and psychologist.
• Regular internal and external activities, workshops, trips, and corporate events.
• Access to our internal knowledge base, meetups, and team-building activities.
• Ongoing training in new technologies and continuous professional development support.