Quality Engineering Lead

Mansell Taylor Consulting; Brisbane; On-site; AUD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Mansell Taylor Consulting is looking for an experienced Quality Engineering leader to oversee a team of 15 SDETs and testing professionals across multiple Product and Engineering squads in Brisbane. You will define what good looks like, set the direction for quality across the lifecycle and drive governance that scales with cloud-based delivery.

This role focuses on automation-first testing, CI/CD integration, performance and security testing, and building a culture of continuous improvement

Qualifications

• Leader who has built and scaled testing teams in complex software environments.
• Strong experience with test automation, CI/CD and cloud-based solutions.
• Solid understanding of APIs and microservices.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach and develop a team of SDETs and testing professionals
• Define and implement quality strategy, principles, standards and governance
• Establish consistent quality gates, entry and exit criteria and release-readiness practices
• Drive an automation-first approach and strengthen automated testing within CI/CD pipelines
• Improve testing practices across cloud applications, APIs and microservices
• Strengthen defect management, root-cause analysis and continuous improvement
• Ensure appropriate testing across performance, resilience, security, scalability and observability
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture and SRE to embed quality throughout the software development lifecycle
• Establish meaningful quality metrics and provide visibility of release readiness and risk
• Build a strong team culture with clear expectations, development opportunities and a shared sense of purpose

Skills

Team leadership

Quality engineering

Test automation

CI/CD

Cloud testing

APIs & microservices

Defect management

People development

Tools

Playwright

GitLab

Job description

Leading a team of 15 SDETs and testing professional, supporting multiple Product and Engineering teams. As the environment continues to evolve, there is an opportunity to bring greater consistency across quality practices, strengthen governance and create clearer standards across the complete quality lifecycle. This role needs a strong people leader who can create a clear direction, bring teams together around common quality principles and continue developing capability across both people and practices.

You’ll define what good looks like while ensuring quality standards remain practical, scalable and aligned to a modern cloud engineering environment.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead, coach and develop a team of SDETs and testing professionals
• Define and implement quality strategy, principles, standards and governance
• Establish consistent quality gates, entry and exit criteria and release-readiness practices
• Drive an automation-first approach and strengthen automated testing within CI/CD pipelines
• Improve testing practices across cloud applications, APIs and microservices
• Strengthen defect management, root-cause analysis and continuous improvement
• Ensure appropriate testing across performance, resilience, security, scalability and observability
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture and SRE to embed quality throughout the software development lifecycle
• Establish meaningful quality metrics and provide visibility of release readiness and risk
• Build a strong team culture with clear expectations, development opportunities and a shared sense of purpose

About you

• You’ll be an experienced Quality Engineering or Test leader who has successfully developed teams and improved quality capability within complex software environments. You’ll bring strong experience across test automation, CI/CD and cloud-based solutions, together with a solid understanding of APIs and microservices.
• You understand the complete testing lifecycle and have the technical credibility to guide experienced SDETs, challenge thinking where required and determine the appropriate level of testing before software progresses into production.
• You’ll be comfortable assessing existing practices, identifying opportunities for improvement and establishing greater consistency across teams. You’ll know how to introduce clear standards and accountability while engaging experienced technical people in the journey.

Ideally, you’ll bring experience across:

• Leading Quality Engineering, SDET or Test Automation teams
• Building or improving test automation frameworks
• Cloud or SaaS software environments
• APIs and microservices
• CI/CD pipelines, automated quality gates and BDD practices
• Release assurance and release-readiness governance
• Performance, load, security and resilience testing
• Playwright and GitLab or similar modern engineering tooling

Your leadership style will be confident, collaborative and pragmatic. You’ll create clarity and direction while giving people the coaching and support they need to continue developing. If you’ve led Quality Engineering in a modern cloud software environment and want the opportunity to shape both the team and the quality capability, we’d like to hear from you.