Engineering Manager - Head of Quality Engineering

Storyteq; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Storyteq is seeking an Engineering Manager – Head of Quality Engineering to define and lead our quality strategy for a scalable, cloud-based SaaS platform. You will oversee a cross-functional Quality Engineering group, shaping test architecture and tooling while partnering with other engineering managers to bake quality into every development cycle.

This role emphasizes hands-on leadership without daily coding, driving automation, performance testing, and release readiness across multiple

Qualifications

• 2+ years’ experience as a Lead and/or Engineering Manager, managing a team of 5+ engineers including remote members.
• Strong technical background as a software engineer or quality engineer, ideally in a B2B SaaS environment.
• Solid hands-on knowledge of test automation, frameworks, patterns, and CI/CD integration.
• Good understanding of exploratory and manual testing, with clear judgement on when each approach is most valuable.
• Ability to influence teams outside direct management to improve how quality is built into their work.
• Hands-on leadership style and willingness to support the team wherever needed.
• Genuine care for the product, customer experience, and the people building it.
• Positive, collaborative approach and the ability to adapt through change.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical topics clearly.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve Storyteq’s quality engineering strategy, defining what we test manually, what we automate, and where automation adds the most value.
• Set the direction for test frameworks, tooling, CI/CD integration, quality standards, release readiness, and quality metrics.
• Embed quality earlier in the development process, helping engineering teams build testing practices, tooling, and mindset into their day-to-day work.
• Lead the Quality Engineering team to deliver strong technical and delivery outcomes, while continuously improving workflows and ways of working.
• Develop a deep understanding of our product architecture and guide the evolution of our test architecture alongside it.
• Balance team capacity between supporting application teams and investing in scalable frameworks, platforms, and automation.
• Build, coach, and retain a high-performing Quality Engineering team, supporting recruitment, onboarding, progression, feedback, and development.
• Grow Quality Engineering as a respected engineering discipline and career path within Storyteq.
• Act as the organisation-wide voice on quality and release risk, clearly communicating risks and actions needed.
• Contribute to the Engineering management team by sharing best practice and aligning cross-team initiatives.

Job description

Storyteq helps marketing and creative teams in top brands to scale their creative production and gain control over their marketing campaigns. Through our platform, our clients can streamline campaign workflows, automate their creative production through templates & AI, and activate engaging campaigns that go to market faster.

We believe creativity takes time, but creative production shouldn’t. Since 2016, our mission has been to revolutionise the way creative assets are created and used. Magic happens when we let technology empower creativity. Our endless curiosity and relentless commitment to our customers lie at the heart of our problem-solving approach. This shared mission is woven into our values: we dream big, think differently, and are stronger together.

Role overview

As Engineering Manager – Head of Quality Engineering, you will own the quality engineering strategy for Storyteq. You lead our cross-departmental Quality Engineering team and set the standard for how quality is designed, built, and verified across all of our engineering teams — covering test strategy and design, exploratory and manual testing, and our automated testing frameworks.

This is not a hands-on coding role, but it is a deeply technical one requiring partnership with the other engineering managers so that quality is built into how the application teams work, rather than inspected at the end. You are accountable for the technical and delivery outcomes of your team, and for the health of our test tooling and frameworks. You should be able to understand, articulate, and weigh in on technical problems, make sound decisions about test architecture and tooling, and represent the state of quality — and the risk we’re carrying — credibly to engineering and to the wider business.

Key responsibilities:

• Own and evolve Storyteq’s quality engineering strategy, defining what we test manually, what we automate, and where automation adds the most value.
• Set the direction for our test frameworks, tooling, CI/CD integration, quality standards, release readiness, and quality metrics.
• Embed quality earlier in the development process, helping engineering teams build testing practices, tooling, and mindset into their day-to-day work.
• Lead the Quality Engineering team to deliver strong technical and delivery outcomes, while continuously improving workflows and ways of working.
• Develop a deep understanding of our product architecture and guide the evolution of our test architecture alongside it.
• Balance team capacity between supporting application teams and investing in scalable frameworks, platforms, and automation.
• Build, coach, and retain a high-performing Quality Engineering team, supporting recruitment, onboarding, progression, feedback, and development.
• Grow Quality Engineering as a respected engineering discipline and career path within Storyteq.
• Act as the organisation-wide voice on quality and release risk, clearly communicating what we know, where the risks are, and what action is needed.
• Contribute to the Engineering management team by sharing best practice, aligning cross-team initiatives, and helping shape how engineering operates at Storyteq.

• 2+ years’ experience as a Lead and/or Engineering Manager, managing a team of 5+ engineers, including remote team members.
• A strong technical background as a software engineer or quality engineer, ideally in a B2B SaaS environment.
• Solid hands-on knowledge of test automation, including frameworks, patterns, and CI/CD integration.
• Good understanding of exploratory and manual testing, with clear judgement on when each approach is most valuable.
• Confidence influencing teams outside of your direct line management to improve how quality is built into their work.
• A hands‑on leadership style, with a willingness to support the team wherever needed.
• A genuine care for the product, the customer experience, and the people building it.
• A positive, collaborative approach and the ability to work well through challenge and change.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical topics clearly to different audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience defining and delivering a quality strategy across multiple engineering teams.
• Familiarity with modern cloud‑native architectures such as microservices, Kubernetes, GCP, or AWS.
• Experience with performance, accessibility, or security testing.
• Exposure to testing AI-driven, media, or creative-generation products where outputs may not always be deterministic.