QA Lead / Test Lead (690218)

Smart Cloud Solution; United States; On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Smart Cloud Solution is seeking an experienced QA Lead / Test Lead to plan, coordinate, govern, and report on end-to-end testing for enterprise applications and system integrations.

The role bridges business requirements and technical validation, leading testing teams and establishing traceability to ensure release readiness and high quality software.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of enterprise QA/testing experience.
• Lead/managerial QA role with hands-on responsibilities.
• Strong automation experience with Playwright or Selenium.
• BRD/FR analysis, RTM design, and traceability expertise.
• API testing and SQL/database validation.
• Experience with Azure DevOps Test Plans and CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the Test Lead for programs, releases, and production-readiness initiatives.
• Develop comprehensive test strategies including scope, estimates, schedules, risks, and criteria.
• Assign and supervise testing activities across the QA team.
• Review test artifacts and ensure QA standards are followed.
• Mentor testers and provide technical guidance throughout testing.
• Collaborate with BAs, Developers, Product Owners, PMs, DevOps, DBAs, and stakeholders.

Skills

QA leadership

Test planning

Team mentoring

Stakeholder communication

Requirements tracing

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Playwright

Selenium

Azure DevOps

SQL

API testing

Git

CI/CD

Job description

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced QA Lead / Test Lead to plan, coordinate, govern, and report on end-to-end testing activities for enterprise applications and system integrations.

This role will bridge business requirements and technical validation, lead and supervise testing teams, establish measurable requirements traceability, and provide management with clear, evidence-based information regarding application quality and release readiness.

The ideal candidate will combine strong QA leadership and test-management experience with hands-on technical expertise in test automation, API testing, SQL/database validation, Azure DevOps Test Plans, and modern software delivery practices. The QA Lead must also be capable of reviewing, troubleshooting, and writing automation code when required.

Core Responsibilities

Test Leadership & Governance

• Serve as the Test Lead for assigned programs, releases, application modules, and production-readiness initiatives.
• Develop comprehensive test strategies covering scope, estimates, schedules, dependencies, risks, entry/exit criteria, and execution plans.
• Assign and supervise testing activities across the QA team.
• Review test artifacts and ensure adherence to established QA standards and processes.
• Mentor testers and provide technical and functional guidance throughout the testing lifecycle.
• Collaborate closely with Business Analysts, Developers, Product Owners, Project Managers, DevOps Engineers, DBAs, and business stakeholders.

Requirements Analysis & Traceability

• Review Business Requirements Documents (BRDs), Functional Requirements (FRs), user stories, acceptance criteria, workflow diagrams, interface specifications, data mappings, and API specifications.
• Identify missing, ambiguous, conflicting, incomplete, or untestable requirements before test execution begins.
• Translate requirements into detailed Test Scenarios (TS), Test Cases (TC), test data, preconditions, expected results, and automation candidates.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM).
• Ensure measurable end-to-end traceability between requirements, test scenarios, test cases, executions, defects, retesting, and closure.
• Monitor and report test coverage to ensure business and technical requirements are adequately validated.

Azure DevOps Test Plans

• Create and maintain Test Plans, Test Suites, Test Cases, configurations, test runs, execution evidence, and defect relationships in Azure DevOps (ADO).
• Establish consistent work-item relationships between BRDs/FRs, test scenarios, test cases, executions, defects, retests, and closure.
• Develop and maintain ADO queries, reports, and dashboards to communicate testing progress, requirements coverage, blockers, defects, risks, and release readiness.

Test Design & Execution

• Create and review test cases using techniques including:
  • Positive and Negative Testing
  • Boundary Value Analysis
  • Equivalence Partitioning
  • Decision Table Testing
  • State Transition Testing
  • Role/Authorization Testing
  • Data-Driven Testing
  • Risk-Based Testing
• Coordinate and participate in Smoke, Functional, API, Integration, System, Regression, End-to-End, UAT, Database, Data Pipeline/ETL, and performance-support testing.
• Ensure test failures are reproducible and supported by sufficient technical evidence.
• Ensure test execution results are accurate, documented, traceable, and defensible.

Test Automation

• Develop, review, troubleshoot, and maintain automated test solutions using Playwright or Selenium.
• Review automation code and ensure appropriate coding and framework standards are followed.
• Identify appropriate candidates for automation based on risk, repeatability, and business value.
• Support reusable automation components including fixtures, Page Objects, API clients, test-data factories, utilities, and custom reporting.
• Contribute to automation framework design and modernization initiatives.
• Support migration from Selenium-based automation to Playwright, where applicable.
• Integrate automated testing into Git-based development and CI/CD pipelines.

API, Database & Data Validation

• Perform and oversee API testing to validate functionality, integrations, responses, error handling, and business rules.
• Use SQL to validate application data, database transactions, and back-end processing.
• Validate data pipelines and ETL processes, including source-to-target transformations, completeness, accuracy, and data integrity.
• Coordinate testing across integrated applications and enterprise systems.

Defect & Release Management

• Lead or participate in defect triage, including severity and priority discussions.
• Ensure defects contain appropriate:
  • Environment and build information
  • Reproduction steps
  • Expected and actual results
  • Screenshots, logs, or other supporting evidence
  • Requirement and test-case relationships
• Track defects through resolution, retesting, and closure.
• Communicate unresolved defects and residual quality risks to management and project stakeholders.
• Provide evidence-based release-readiness information and recommendations.

Required Qualifications

• Enterprise software QA/testing experience - 7+ Years - Required
• QA Lead, Test Lead, or Senior QA role with formal leadership responsibilities - 2+ Years - Required
• Extensive hands-on Playwright or Selenium automation experience - Required
• Strong BRD/FR analysis, RTM design, requirements traceability, and coverage-management experience - Required
• Strong API testing experience - Required
• Strong SQL/database validation experience - Required
• Experience supervising testers and reviewing test artifacts - Required
• Experience leading defect triage and reporting testing status to management - Required
• Experience with Git, code review, CI/CD, and modern software delivery practices - Required
• Data Pipeline / ETL validation experience - Required

Highly Desired Qualifications

• Hands-on Playwright + TypeScript experience.
• Experience designing Playwright + TypeScript automation frameworks.
• Experience migrating automation frameworks from Selenium to Playwright.
• Experience developing reusable fixtures, Page Objects, API clients, test-data factories, utilities, and custom test reporting.
• Performance-testing experience or experience coordinating specialized performance and security testing.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a hands-on QA Lead rather than a purely managerial Test Lead. The individual should be comfortable leading testers and communicating with management while also being technically capable of reviewing automation code, working with Playwright/Selenium, validating APIs and databases, analyzing requirements, managing traceability in Azure DevOps, and troubleshooting complex enterprise application integrations.