Head of QA Engineering

Strongpoint Partners; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Strongpoint Partners is seeking a dedicated Quality Assurance lead to own the QA function end-to-end. You will define test plans, build automation (including AI agents), and establish gates for releases across SPARK, AGL, Nexus Bridge, and Strongpay.

You will implement regression coverage, load tests, and rollback playbooks while building a quality metrics dashboard for ongoing reporting. You will work within a two-week sprint cycle alongside engineers, ensuring security checks are part of every

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software QA experience, including 2+ years owning automated tests.
• Hands-on with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps).
• Experience verifying data with SQL.
• Load/performance testing experience with modern tools.

Responsibilities

• Own release testing across SPARK, AGL, Nexus Bridge, Strongpay with defined quality gates.
• Build and integrate automated regression suites into pipelines.
• Own AI testing agents and define their coverage and review requirements.
• Establish load and performance tests and identify platform limits.
• Create rollback playbooks for each platform and keep them current.
• Develop quality metrics dashboards and ongoing reporting.
• Incorporate security testing before releases (OWASP-related checks).
• Work in sprint cycles from planning to demo.

Skills

QA

Automation

CI/CD

SQL

Load testing

Performance testing

Security testing

AI testing

Sprint collaboration

Tools

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Jest

Vitest

JMeter

k6

Gatling

SQL Server

Job description

Strongpoint Partners is tech -enabled retirement services platform serving small- to mid-sized businesses with integrated retirement third party administration, recordkeeping, payroll, and HR solutions. Recognized as one of Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Private Companies in America and certified as a Great Place to Work, Strongpoint offers a suite of services that prioritizes accuracy, compliance, and reduction of regulatory risk for its clients, delivered by local client success teams that understand the nuances of the markets they serve. Strongpoint Partners combines a relentless passion for service and innovation with the experience and expertise required to make retirement work for everyone. For more information, please visit: www.strongpointpartners.com .

About the Role

Our Product and Engineering team runs four platforms: SPARK (our AI platform for TPA operations), AGL (Advisor Growth Lab, our advisor community), Nexus Bridge (our systems integration layer), and Strongpay (our payroll and HR platform for small and mid-sized businesses, with thousands of logins every weekday). All four ship at the end of every two-week sprint.

Our engineers maintain unit and integration test suites and run them before every release. Beyond that, testing has largely been handled by whoever built the feature or requested it. That approach worked while the audience was small.

As Strongpoint grows, every firm we acquire moves onto the same platforms. In 2027, we are pushing for deeper adoption within each TPA, with these applications increasingly embedded in their core workflows. When a TPA runs its core work on our software, a bad release can disrupt client service. On Strongpay, it can disrupt payroll processing.

You will be our first dedicated Quality Assurance (QA) hire and will lead the function end to end. You will set the test plan, build the automation, determine what gates a release, and establish how we measure and report on quality.

There is no existing QA team to inherit, so coverage will come first from automation—including AI agents—before it comes from additional headcount.

What You Will Own

Release Testing
Own release testing across SPARK, AGL, Nexus Bridge, and Strongpay, establishing a defined quality check before code ships that is independent of the engineer who built the feature.

Automated Test Suite
Build on the unit and integration suites our engineers already maintain. Today, those tests are run manually before releases, nothing runs as an automated gate on every build, and features are checked against tickets manually.

You will build regression coverage and integrate it into the pipelines we already use, including GitHub Actions for SPARK and AGL and Azure DevOps for Strongpay.

AI Testing Agents
QA owns these. We already run agents that pick up a ticket when it moves to “Ready for QA” and test it against the acceptance criteria. Today, they serve as a first pass.

You will refine how these agents operate: what they cover, how they test, what still requires human review, and how far we can trust their results.

Load and Performance Testing
SPARK and AGL have never been tested under heavy traffic, while Strongpay carries the highest volume. You will establish load and performance testing across the platforms and identify their limits before the next onboarding finds them for us.

Rollback Planning
Strongpay snapshots its database before every deployment. SPARK and AGL do not currently have a documented process for backing out a release that causes issues in production.

You will create the rollback playbook for each platform, test it, and keep it current as our systems evolve.

Quality Metrics and Reporting
Start with escaped defects—the bugs a partner or client finds before we do. We do not currently track them.

From there, establish additional metrics including time to fix, measured from when a bug is reported until the fix is live, and hotfix frequency. Without those numbers, decisions about how quickly to ship versus how much to harden are largely a guess.

You will build the quality dashboard and own ongoing reporting.

Security Testing Before Release
Establish checks for common attack patterns as part of the release process, complementing the code scanning and annual penetration testing already in place.

A Seat in the Sprint
Work directly within the two-week sprint cycle alongside our engineers, participating from planning through demo.

What Your First Year Could Look Like

First 90 Days

Observe several release cycles and document where testing happens today across each platform and who performs it. Take ownership of the AI testing agents and begin logging escaped defects to establish a baseline.

Deliver the first automated regression suite for one high-traffic area of SPARK, AGL, or Strongpay.

By Month 6

Establish automated coverage across the core release paths of SPARK and AGL, with a coverage baseline for Strongpay beginning with payroll‑critical paths.

The AI testing agents operate according to a written plan defining what they cover and what requires human review. A documented rollback plan has been used or rehearsed at least once. Baseline load‑test results exist for SPARK and AGL.

A first version of the quality dashboard is live, reporting escaped defects and time to fix by platform.

By Month 12

A single dashboard reports key quality metrics across all four platforms, including escaped defects, time to fix, hotfix rate, automated coverage, and load‑test results. Metrics are trended release over release and reviewed each sprint.

Strongpay and Nexus Bridge are tested to the same standard as SPARK and AGL, including load testing, and security testing is a standard step in every release.

SPARK and AGL

TypeScript throughout

AGL uses Next.js and React

SQL Server

Hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Vercel

Deployed with GitHub Actions

Unit and integration testing with Jest and Vitest

Strongpay

SQL Server

.NET MAUI mobile application for iOS and Android

Public API

Extensive payroll, banking, and benefits integrations

Hosted on AWS

Deployed with Azure DevOps

AI in Our Products

SPARK and AGL include AI-powered features such as document extraction and an AI assistant. As a result, some testing involves outputs that do not have a single “correct” answer and require evaluating quality and accuracy rather than exact matches.

Qualifications

Required

5+ years of experience in software QA, including at least 2 years building or owning an automated test suite from the ground up

Hands‑on experience with continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines such as GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, with the ability to integrate testing into an existing deployment pipeline

Proficiency in SQL sufficient to verify the underlying data behind a test

Load and performance testing experience using JMeter, k6, Gatling, or similar tools, including experience designing a load‑test plan without an existing template

Experience writing or owning a rollback or incident runbook and the ability to discuss how it was used in practice

Experience working alongside engineers as a peer within a two‑week sprint cycle

Working knowledge of security testing, including common injection and authentication vulnerabilities and the OWASP Top 10

Current experience using AI tools as part of testing work, with a clear understanding of where they add value and where human judgment is still required

Strongly Preferred

Experience with .NET and C#, or experience building test coverage for a mature application with limited existing coverage

Mobile application testing experience across iOS and Android

Experience testing AI‑