QA Manager & Quality Strategy Lead (Hands-On)

Atlantic Media; Washington; On-site; USD 145,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

The Atlantic is seeking a hands-on, strategic QA Manager to build and own our engineering quality practice. This player‑coach role combines testing and automation with developing standards, processes, and vendor relationships that raise quality across the engineering organization.

You will be responsible for defining QA strategy, aligning with Reader Experience, Membership & Growth, Interactive, and Mobile teams, and embedding quality into workflows.

Qualifications

• 7+ years QA experience, including 2+ years in a lead or senior QA role
• Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks (Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, or similar)
• Experience managing QA contractors, vendors, or offshore testing teams
• Experience developing or significantly improving QA processes and standards within an engineering organization
• Strong understanding of SDLC and agile/CI-CD practices
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar)

Responsibilities

• Own the engineering quality practice: define testing standards, processes, and tooling for the organization
• Manage day-to-day relationship with offshore QA partner and oversee a team of five QA contractors
• Work hands-on as a practitioner — designing test strategies, writing automated tests, and contributing directly to quality
• Partner with engineering teams across Reader Experience, Membership & Growth, Interactive, and Mobile to embed quality practices
• Define and uphold quality standards for AI-powered features, including test approaches for LLM-driven experiences and non-deterministic outputs
• Integrate quality gates into CI/CD pipelines to enable fast, confident deployments
• Identify testing gaps and systemic quality risks across the product and surface them to engineering leadership
• Evaluate and recommend QA tooling and automation frameworks as needs evolve
• Track and report on quality metrics and trends to the VP of Engineering
• Help build a culture of shared ownership around quality — across teams
• Participate in on-call rotation to monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve production incidents; nights/weekends included

Skills

QA leadership

Test automation

CI/CD

Vendor management

QA processes

Agile

Offshore teams

Testing strategies

Tools

Playwright

Selenium

Cypress

GitHub Actions

Job description

The Atlantic is seeking a hands-on, strategic QA Manager to build and own our engineering quality practice. This player‑coach role combines testing and automation with developing standards, processes, and vendor relationships that raise quality across the engineering organization.

You will be responsible for defining QA strategy, aligning with Reader Experience, Membership & Growth, Interactive, and Mobile teams, and embedding quality into workflows.