Application QA Lead - Automation & Quality Excellence

horacemannservicecorporation; Springfield (IL); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Horace Mann Service Corporation seeks an Application Quality Assurance Lead to guide QA efforts across multiple projects. The role combines hands-on testing with team leadership, process improvement, and governance, reporting to the QA Manager.

Hybrid work options in Springfield, IL or Plano, TX support collaboration with onshore and offshore teams. The ideal candidate brings 8+ years in software QA, 5+ years leading teams, and strong automation/AI testing experience, plus excellent

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent professional experience).
• Eight or more years of software quality assurance experience.
• Five or more years leading QA activities or teams.
• Experience in Agile/Scrum environments and supporting enterprise software implementations.
• Experience leading onshore and offshore QA resources.
• Strong knowledge of test planning, execution, defect management, risk assessment, and release readiness.
• Experience with test automation and AI-assisted testing.
• Insurance industry experience is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute project test strategies, plans, schedules, and resource estimates.
• Define testing scope, objectives, risks, dependencies, environments, and entry/exit criteria.
• Review requirements for clarity, testability, and coverage.
• Review test scenarios and regression suites; ensure traceability.
• Coordinate functional, system integration, regression, end-to-end, and UAT testing.
• Lead defect triage; monitor aging, severity, and SLA compliance.
• Mentor QA analysts; promote QA standards and best practices.
• Promote automation and AI-assisted testing; drive shift-left and continuous improvement.
• Prepare release-readiness assessments and progress reports.

Skills

QA Leadership

Agile/Scrum

Test planning

Defect management

Automation

AI-assisted testing

Communication

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering

Tools

Azure DevOps

Jira

UFT

Selenium

Playwright

Postman

SoapUI

Excel

Power BI

Job description

Horace Mann Service Corporation seeks an Application Quality Assurance Lead to guide QA efforts across multiple projects. The role combines hands-on testing with team leadership, process improvement, and governance, reporting to the QA Manager.

Hybrid work options in Springfield, IL or Plano, TX support collaboration with onshore and offshore teams. The ideal candidate brings 8+ years in software QA, 5+ years leading teams, and strong automation/AI testing experience, plus excellent