QA Manager

NextgenID; Fairfax, Northern (VA, KY); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

NextgenID is seeking a QA Manager to own the end-to-end quality of our Identity Platform for federal and enterprise customers. You will define the QA strategy, set release gates, and lead a team of QA Engineers and QA Automation Engineers, reporting to the CTO and EVP.

You will own the automated testing direction, ensure audit-ready evidence for Kantara IAL3 and FedRAMP, and collaborate with Engineering, Product, and GRC to ship secure, correct software.

Qualifications

• Six or more years in QA with team ownership.
• Own release quality gates and ship/hold decisions.
• Experience with test automation and CI/CD.
• Experience with performance and security testing.
• Audit-ready test evidence for certifications.
• Strong leadership and communication skills.
• Based in Fairfax, VA; U.S. citizen.

Responsibilities

• Own a documented QA strategy and release-gate standard across the Identity Platform.
• Lead, mentor, and hire QA Engineers and QA Automation Engineers; report status to leadership.
• Direct the automation roadmap and CI/CD-integrated testing to improve coverage.
• Produce audit-ready test evidence mapped to Kantara, FedRAMP requirements.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, GRC to ensure testability and release planning.
• Represent quality in planning and go/no-go decisions; drive quality metrics.

Skills

QA Leadership

Release management

Test automation

CI/CD

Security testing

Audits & compliance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering or related field

Tools

Selenium

TestNG

Jenkins

Job description

Location: Onsite – Fairfax, VA (HQ) · U.S. Citizen Required (FedRAMP / Federal Customer)

Type: Full Time

NextgenID is hiring a QA Manager to own the quality of our Identity Platform end-to-end. We verify and credential identity for federal agencies and enterprises, so a defect that reaches production can break an enrollment, weaken an assurance claim, or surface in an audit. You own the QA strategy, the release quality gates, the automation direction, and the test evidence that supports our Kantara IAL3 and FedRAMP audits. You lead the QA Engineers and the QA Automation Engineers and report to the CTO and EVP.

This is a working leadership role. You set the test strategy across the workflows, multi-modal biometrics, document capture, credential issuance, kiosk and peripheral integration, and the AWS back end, and you also stay close enough to the product to make the ship-or-hold call yourself. You partner with Engineering, Product, GRC, and Client Solutions to ship software that is correct, secure, and provably tested.

Salary Range: $115,000–$165,000

Role Fit & Non-Negotiables

• Based at our Fairfax, VA headquarters (onsite).
• U.S. citizen, required for FedRAMP and federal-customer obligations.
• Six or more years in QA, including ownership of a test strategy and a team.
• Able to own release quality gates and make the ship or hold decision.
• Comfortable owning test evidence that goes to auditors.

What You Will Own (90 to 180 Day Outcomes)

• A single, documented QA strategy and release quality-gate standard across the Identity Platform.
• A defect governance process with coverage, escape-rate, and time-to-resolve metrics reported to leadership.
• An automation roadmap that raises regression coverage and shortens release cycles.
• Audit-ready test evidence mapped to Kantara IAL3 and FedRAMP control requirements.
• A QA team hired to the organizational plan, with the Sr. QA backfill and QA Automation Engineer onboarded and productive.

Core Responsibilities

QA Strategy and Leadership

Own the quality program and the team.

• Own the QA strategy, standards, and process across the Identity Platform and the release lifecycle.
• Lead, mentor, and hire the QA Engineers and the QA Automation Engineers.
• Report quality status, risk, and metrics to the CTO and leadership.

Release Quality and Gates

Decide what ships.

• Own the release quality gates and the ship or hold decision for each release.
• Set entry and exit criteria for functional, regression, performance, security, and acceptance testing.
• Balance schedule against risk and make the call with documented reasoning.

Test Architecture and Automation

Set the technical direction of testing.

• Direct the automation strategy (Selenium, TestNG, Jenkins, CI/CD) and test-environment design.
• Own coverage across the SRIP workflow, biometrics, credential issuance, and kiosk integration.
• Drive test reliability and reduce flaky, low-value tests.

Compliance and Audit Evidence

Make quality provable.

• Own test evidence mapped to Kantara IAL3, NIST SP 800-63, and FedRAMP requirements.
• Partner with GRC on audit readiness and control evidence.
• Keep traceability from requirements to test cases to results.

Cross-Functional Partnership

Deliver quality through the whole org.

• Partner with Engineering and Product on testability, requirements, and release planning.
• Feed field-observed defects from Client Solutions back into test coverage.
• Represent quality in planning and go / no-go decisions.

What You Must Have Already Done

• Owned a QA strategy and release quality gates for a software and hardware product.
• Built and led a QA team, including hiring and mentoring.
• Stood up or scaled test automation and CI/CD-integrated testing.
• Produced test evidence for a formal audit or certification.
• Made and defended a ship or hold decision under schedule pressure.

Qualifications

Required

• Six or more years in QA or test engineering, with team and strategy ownership.
• Deep command of the software testing lifecycle: planning, design, execution, and reporting.
• Experience owning release quality gates and go / no-go decisions.
• Experience with test automation and CI/CD (Selenium, TestNG, Jenkins, or equivalent).
• Experience with performance and security testing approaches.
• Experience producing test evidence for audits or certifications.
• Strong leadership, hiring, and communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Based in Fairfax, VA; U.S. citizen (FedRAMP / federal customer).

Preferred

• Experience testing identity, biometrics, or high-assurance security software.
• Experience with FedRAMP, NIST SP 800-63, or Kantara audit environments.
• ISTQB, CSQE, or equivalent quality certification.
• Experience with AWS-hosted platforms and device or kiosk integration testing.
• Experience with API and back-end test automation.
• Prior QA Lead or QA Manager experience in a regulated or federal setting.
• You decide what ships, and you can defend the call.
• You measure quality and move the numbers, not just run tests.
• You build a team that catches defects before customers do.
• You make quality provable, so an audit is a formality, not a drill.
• You partner with Engineering instead of policing it.

What Success Looks Like

• A documented QA strategy and release-gate standard are in place and followed.
• Escaped-defect rate trends down while release cadence holds or improves.
• Automation coverage rises and regression cycles shorten.
• Test evidence maps cleanly to Kantara and FedRAMP requirements.
• The QA team is hired to plan and deliver to standard.

Why NextgenID

NextgenID builds the identity infrastructure that federal agencies and enterprises trust at the highest assurance level. Quality is what lets us make that claim. As QA Manager you own the standard that every release meets, and your work shows up in every certification we hold and every enrollment that succeeds in the field. For the right person, this is the path to a QA Director or engineering leadership role.

NextgenID focuses on improving the efficiency and speed of mission critical, high assurance identity enrollment and credentialing operations that are essential to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Our technologies are engineered to dramatically reduce the time and cost of capturing accurate data when creating a digital identity. Our industry-neutral solutions revolve around "Supervised Remote-Identity Proofing" to automatically, securely and "remotely" perform all proofing, enrollment and credentialing processes and workflows for our customers. The industry is taking notice as we are now working with some of the largest agencies in the US Defense, intelligence, Civil, State and Local government markets, as well as other national governments and commercial organizations throughout the world.