Senior Director, Quality Engineering

Springhealth66; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) matching

Noom program

Fertility assistance

Wellhub access

BrightHorizons child care

Professional development reimbursement

Donation matching

Job summary

Spring Health seeks a senior engineering leader to define and drive the quality strategy for AI-native products. You will build agentic testing, evaluation systems, and regression tooling across the SDLC, partnering with Engineering, Product, Security, and Data Science to ensure trust, accuracy, and regulatory compliance.

You will lead a distributed QE organization, establish modern testing practices for LLM-powered features, and advance release confidence while accelerating delivery in a hybrid

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and scaling quality engineering organizations in high-growth environments.
• Deep technical expertise in test automation architecture at scale and modern frameworks.
• Hands-on experience building evaluation/testing systems for AI/ML or LLM-powered products.
• Experience deploying AI agents into the SDLC for test generation, triage, maintenance, or code review.
• Shift-left transformation experience with platform support.
• Experience with HIPAA, SOC 2, PHI-safe test data and auditability requirements.
• Strategic mindset with hands-on execution and technical credibility.
• Strong cross-functional leadership and communication at executive levels.
• Demonstrated ability to drive measurable outcomes (defect reductions, coverage, cycle times).

Responsibilities

• Define and execute enterprise Quality Engineering strategy across the AI SDLC.
• Embed quality via automation, standards, and release governance.
• Build testing frameworks for AI-powered products and LLM features.
• Drive AI agents to automate test generation, regression testing, and triage.
• Establish scalable testing across functional, integration, performance, security, and accessibility.
• Create reusable testing platforms and CI/CD quality tooling.
• Define validation frameworks ensuring safety, compliance, and PHI-safe data.
• Lead and scale a distributed QE organization with cross-functional alignment.

Skills

Quality leadership

Test automation

AI/ML testing

CI/CD tooling

LLM testing

Strategic planning

Cross-functional leadership

Regulated domains

Tools

Playwright

Cypress

pytest

Jest

Job description

Our mission: eliminating every barrier to mental health.

Spring Health is a global mental health company on a mission to eliminate every barrier to mental health. We're building a world where getting support is simple, personal, and built around the person, so care can continue through every job, move, health plan, and life stage.

Our AI-native platform helps us deliver personalized support across self-guided tools, coaching, therapy, medication management, and specialty care. With outcomes independently validated by JAMA Network Open and the Validation Institute, Spring Health reaches more than 170 million people worldwide through leading employers, health plans, and partners.

As an AI-native company, we believe technology should expand the reach, quality, and humanity of care. Every Spring Health team member is expected to use AI tools thoughtfully, apply human judgment to AI outputs, and keep building AI fluency in ways that support their role and our mission.

As a senior engineering leader, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing the quality strategy for everything we ship. You will define what \"high quality\" means for an AI-native healthcare company — building the testing frameworks, agentic quality systems, and evaluation infrastructure that let us release faster with more confidence, and that earn clinical and enterprise trust in AI-driven features.

Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, you will lead the Quality Engineering organization responsible for driving org-wide testing strategy, intelligent automation, and AI-powered quality practices across the software development lifecycle. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Design, Infrastructure, Security, and Data Science leaders to embed quality throughout the development process, not simply validate software before release.

You will help redefine software quality through agentic AI by deploying autonomous testing agents, intelligent regression systems, and AI-driven quality insights that accelerate delivery while improving confidence in every release. This leader will establish modern testing frameworks for AI-native products, large language model (LLM) powered features, and intelligent workflows, ensuring they meet the highest standards for accuracy, robustness, security, trust, and responsible AI.

Please note that this is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, with an expectation to be in the office 2–3 days per week at our 44 Montgomery Street location. Candidates must be based in the San Francisco metro area or able to relocate independently within 90 days of their start date. Occasional travel will be required for team on‑sites.

What you'll do

• Contribute to company-wide leadership initiatives including workforce planning, org design, and build-vs-buy decisions on quality tooling and vendors. Define, instrument, and report the quality metrics that leadership and the Board use to assess engineering health.
• Define and execute the enterprise Quality Engineering strategy, embedding quality across the AI-native SDLC through automation, measurable quality standards, and release governance.
• Build modern testing frameworks for AI-powered products, LLM applications, and agentic workflows, including automated evaluation, model validation, and continuous quality monitoring.
• Drive adoption of AI agents to automate test generation, regression testing, defect analysis, release readiness, and engineering productivity.
• Establish scalable testing practices across functional, integration, regression, performance, security, accessibility, and end-to-end testing to improve release confidence and reduce production defects.
• Build reusable testing platforms, automation frameworks, and CI/CD quality tooling that enable engineering teams to own quality and accelerate delivery.
• Define validation frameworks that ensure AI systems are reliable, safe, compliant, and trustworthy while partnering with Security, Privacy, Clinical, and AI teams. Ensure testing practices satisfy HIPAA, SOC 2, and applicable clinical and regulatory requirements, validation evidence, auditability, traceability, and PHI-safe test data management.
• Lead and scale a high-performing, distributed Quality Engineering organization while driving cross-functional alignment and fostering a culture of quality, ownership, and continuous improvement.

What success looks like

• Enterprise-wide quality strategy fully integrated into the AI software development lifecycle.
• Significant improvements in automated test coverage across functional, integration, regression, performance, security, and AI-specific testing.
• High release confidence with measurable reductions in escaped defects, production incidents, and customer-reported issues.
• Industry-leading testing frameworks supporting AI-native applications, LLM-powered features, and autonomous agent workflows.
• AI agents successfully augment Quality Engineering through autonomous test generation, execution, defect analysis, and release intelligence.
• Engineering teams adopt quality-by-design principles, resulting in faster release cycles without compromising reliability.
• Comprehensive trust, safety, and responsible AI validation processes protecting customer experience and regulatory compliance.
• Quality is a shared responsibility, engineering teams own their quality outcomes, supported by QE platforms and standards rather than dependent on manual QA gates.
• A high-performing Quality Engineering organization recognized as a strategic partner enabling product innovation rather than slowing delivery.

What you'll bring

• Proven experience leading and scaling quality engineering organizations (multiple teams across products) in high-growth & fast paced environments, including distributed and globally sourced teams.
• Deep technical expertise in test automation architecture at scale & modern frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Cypress, pytest, Jest), CI/CD integration, contract and API testing, performance and resilience testing.
• Hands‑on experience building evaluation and testing systems for AI/ML or LLM-powered products: eval harnesses, golden datasets, LLM-as-judge, regression testing across model and prompt changes, red‑teaming, and guardrail validation.
• Demonstrated experience deploying AI agents or AI‑assisted tooling into the SDLC, test generation, triage, maintenance, or code review with measurable productivity gains.
• Strong track record of shift‑left transformation: moving organizations from manual QA gatekeeping to engineer‑owned quality with platform support.
• Experience with quality in regulated or high‑consequence domains (healthcare, fintech, or similar), including HIPAA/SOC 2, PHI-safe test data, and audit and traceability requirements.
• Strategic mindset with the ability to balance long‑term vision and hands‑on execution; credible in deep technical design reviews.
• Strong cross‑functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence at executive levels and make quality trade‑offs legible to non‑engineering stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to drive measurable outcomes (e.g., escaped defect rate, change failure rate, test cycle time, automation coverage, eval pass rates, cost per release).

The target base salary range for this position is $230,000 - $250,000, and is part of a competitive total rewards package including equity and benefits. Individual pay may vary from the target range and is determined by a number of factors including experience, location, internal pay equity, and other relevant business considerations. We review all employee pay and compensation programs annually using Radford Global Compensation Database at minimum to ensure competitive and fair pay.

Benefits provided by Spring Health:

Note: We have even more benefits than listed here and below, your recruiter will provide more in-depth information as you continue in the interview process. Benefits are subject to individual plan requirements and eligibility criteria.

• Health, Dental, Vision benefits start on your first day at Spring. You and your dependents also receive access to One Medicalaccounts HSA and FSA plans are also available, with Spring contributing up to $1K for HSAs, depending on your plan type.
• Employer sponsored 401(k) match of up to 2% for retirement planning
• A yearly allotment of no cost visits to the Spring Health network of therapists, coaches, and medication management providers for you and your dependents.
• We offer competitive paid time off policies including vacation, sick leave and company holidays.
• At 6 months tenure with Spring, we offer parental leave of 18 weeks for birthing parents and 16 weeks for non‑birthing parents.
• Access to Noom, a weight management program—based in psychology, that’s tailored to your unique needs and goals.
• Access to Carrot, in addition to $4,000 reimbursement for related fertility expenses.
• Access toWellhub, which connects employees to the best options for fitness, mindfulness, nutrition, and sleep in one subscription
• Access to BrightHorizons, which provides sponsored child care, back‑up care, and elder care
• Up to $1,000 Professional Development Reimbursement a year.
• $200 per year donation matching to support your favorite causes.

Not sure if you meet every requirement? Research shows that women and people from historically underrepresented communities often hesitate to apply for roles unless they meet every qualification compared to other similarly‑qualified candidates. At Spring Health, we are committed to fostering a workplace where everyone feels valued, empowered, and supported to Thrive. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply.

Our privacy policy: https://springhealth.com/privacy-policy/

Spring Health is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable legal requirements. Spring Health is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.