Head of Quality Engineering & Automation

1001 Absa Bank; Randburg; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Absa Bank Limited seeks a senior Quality Engineering leader to own the strategy and practice for digital services, focusing on automation, early assurance and measurable production quality. You will establish governance, tooling and a mature roadmap to enable fast, secure releases across domains.

You will lead cross-functional teams, define risk-based approaches, and drive reusable automation while embedding tests into CI/CD with fast feedback and measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8 - 12+ years' experience in Quality Engineering, QA or Software Testing.
• Proven experience leading Quality Engineering or QA teams and driving quality practices across multiple digital products, platforms and delivery teams.
• Proven implementation of automated testing at scale within CI/CD and DevSecOps environments.
• Deep experience with functional, API, integration, mobile/web, performance, resilience and production-quality practices.
• Experience establishing risk-based quality governance and using evidence to advise on release readiness.
• Strong track record transforming manual QA into an engineering-led, automation-first practice in a regulated environment.

Responsibilities

• Own the quality engineering strategy and practice with emphasis on automation, early assurance and measurable production quality.
• Enable teams to release secure, reliable and accessible digital services at pace.
• Establishe quality as a shared, continuous responsibility across product and delivery teams.
• Define the quality engineering strategy, target operating model, standards and maturity roadmap.
• Set risk-based approaches covering functional, integration, regression, performance, resilience, security, accessibility, data and journey quality.
• Clarify accountabilities across product, engineering, architecture, security, operations and suppliers.
• Advise the CIO and executive forums on quality risk, investment priorities and release confidence.
• Establish reusable automation frameworks, test-data approaches, service virtualisation, environments and tooling.
• Embed automated tests and quality controls into CI/CD with fast feedback and governance evidence.
• Prioritise automation according to business criticality, repeatability, defect risk and maintenance cost.
• Drive shift-left defect prevention and shift-right validation using telemetry, synthetic monitoring and production learning.
• Define quality gates, release-readiness criteria, exception processes and evidence by change-risk class.
• Provide measures for defect trends, escaped defects, automation effectiveness, reliability, cycle time and customer impact.
• Lead root-cause learning on material defects and ensures systemic improvements are implemented.
• Provide independent challenge on release risk while helping teams remove quality constraints.
• Lead quality engineering managers, automation specialists, communities of practice and strategic partners.
• Measure success through fewer escaped defects, effective automation, earlier detection, release confidence, non-functional outcomes and lower cycle time.
• First-year priorities include setting the baseline and roadmap, establishing governance and measures, delivering high-value quality improvements and building sustainable capability.

Skills

Quality engineering

Automation

CI/CD

Test data

Service virtualisation

Telemetry

Production learning

Governance

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Information Technology degree

Tools

Automation frameworks

API/UI testing

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Absa Bank Limited seeks a senior Quality Engineering leader to own the strategy and practice for digital services, focusing on automation, early assurance and measurable production quality. You will establish governance, tooling and a mature roadmap to enable fast, secure releases across domains.

You will lead cross-functional teams, define risk-based approaches, and drive reusable automation while embedding tests into CI/CD with fast feedback and measurable outcomes.