Senior QA Lead: Cross‑Functional, Release‑Ready Validation

UNICON International Inc.; Torrance (CA); On-site; USD 103,000 - 108,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k)

Other standard benefits as applicable

Job summary

UNICON is seeking a Senior QA Lead based in Torrance, CA, onsite, to own and drive QA strategy across a large enterprise modernization program. You will create detailed test plans, lead cross-functional QA execution across multiple teams including vendor and security groups, and ensure traceability from requirements to release readiness.

The ideal candidate will bring hands-on QA leadership, strong experience with waterfall or hybrid delivery, and a proven ability to coordinate complex test

Qualifications

• Senior-level QA leadership experience on large enterprise modernization, transformation, or complex system implementations.
• Hands-on experience developing and executing QA strategies, test plans, test cases, and defect management processes.
• Proven experience leading QA teams in a cross-functional enterprise environment with multiple upstream, downstream, vendor, business, and technology teams.
• Strong waterfall delivery experience with phase-based planning, formal test cycles, stage gates, sign-offs, and risk management.
• Experience coordinating system integration testing, regression testing, end-to-end testing, UAT, and release validation through test management tools.
• Experience with automation testing strategy, automation frameworks, regression automation, and determining where automation provides value.
• Strong experience managing end-to-end QA execution through test management tools, including test case oversight and defect triage.
• Strong project management skills including planning, milestones, dependency management, risk and issue management.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the overall QA strategy, test planning, test readiness, execution tracking, defect management, and QA reporting for assigned program scope.
• Create and maintain detailed test plans, test schedules, test scenarios, test cases, entry/exit criteria, test data plans, and environment readiness plans.
• Lead QA execution across multiple teams including vendor, SaaS, integration, infrastructure, security, and legacy systems.
• Stay hands-on with testing details: coverage, execution progress, defect status, data readiness, environment readiness, risks and decisions.
• Drive daily QA checkpoints during test execution and document blockers, decisions, and next steps clearly.
• Identify and elevate QA risks, issues, blockers, and dependencies with impact and management actions.
• Lead defect triage and coordinate resolution across teams to ensure release readiness.
• Ensure traceability from requirements to test cases, results, defects, and release decisions.
• Prepare detailed QA status reports with metrics, accomplishments, upcoming activities, risks, and dependency status.
• Support release readiness, go/no-go, stakeholder communication, production validation planning, and post-test lessons learned.

Skills

QA leadership

Test planning

Test strategy

Waterfall methodology

Cross-functional work

Test management tools

Automation testing

Stakeholder communication

Release readiness

Defect triage

Risk management

Traceability

Job description

UNICON is seeking a Senior QA Lead based in Torrance, CA, onsite, to own and drive QA strategy across a large enterprise modernization program. You will create detailed test plans, lead cross-functional QA execution across multiple teams including vendor and security groups, and ensure traceability from requirements to release readiness.

The ideal candidate will bring hands-on QA leadership, strong experience with waterfall or hybrid delivery, and a proven ability to coordinate complex test