Senior Manager QA Engineering
This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Manager QA Engineering based in Brazil.
This is a senior technical leadership role focused on strengthening software quality, reliability, performance, and scalability across multiple engineering squads. You will shape quality engineering strategy while leading a multidisciplinary team of QA engineers and analysts. The role combines strategic planning, people leadership, technical judgment, and operational execution. You will drive the evolution of test automation, quality standards, metrics, and risk-based testing practices. Working closely with Engineering and Product, you will help establish shared ownership of quality throughout the software development lifecycle. You will also champion practical applications of AI and emerging technologies to improve testing effectiveness and team productivity. The environment values accountability, continuous improvement, collaboration, and meaningful technical transformation.
Accountabilities:
- Lead the execution of the quality engineering strategy across multiple squads, aligning testing priorities with product and engineering objectives and ensuring quality risks are addressed throughout the development lifecycle.
- Lead, mentor, and develop a multidisciplinary team of QA engineers and analysts while creating a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and high performance.
- Own and continuously evolve the test automation strategy, architecture, tooling, and standards, increasing automation maturity, maintainability, coverage, and effectiveness across engineering teams.
- Drive a measurable reduction in manual regression testing through reliable automation and risk-based testing approaches while maintaining appropriate exploratory and manual testing for comprehensive product coverage.
- Guide the transition from a QA-owned testing model toward shared quality ownership across Quality, Engineering, and Product, establishing clear responsibilities and accountability.
- Establish and monitor quality KPIs covering efficiency, defect trends, testing effectiveness, and release readiness, using insights to improve operational performance and release confidence.
- Identify testing risks, dependencies, quality gaps, and technical challenges, guiding teams toward effective mitigation plans and stronger QA workflows and operating practices.
- Manage team capacity, resource planning, and priorities to support business objectives while balancing long-term quality initiatives with tactical execution.
- Evaluate and operationalize AI-assisted approaches that can improve test creation, maintenance, execution, analysis, defect detection, and overall team effectiveness.
- Provide technical guidance on automation architectures, frameworks, CI/CD integrations, and quality engineering decisions, stepping into complex technical problem-solving when required.
- 8+ years of experience in QA engineering, software quality, or a related field, including 5+ years of formal or informal people leadership experience.
- Proven experience defining and scaling test automation strategies, frameworks, tooling, and standards across complex software environments.
- Strong technical depth with the ability to evaluate automation architectures, framework design, code quality, CI/CD integrations, and technical tradeoffs without requiring day-to-day hands-on implementation.
- Advanced experience with automated testing tools and frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress, JUnit, and TestNG, combined with a deep understanding of QA methodologies, software development lifecycles, defect management, and test planning.
- Experience with quality management and development platforms such as Jira and TestRail, including the ability to establish quality metrics that drive measurable operational improvements.
- Proven experience leading QA teams across multiple disciplines, products, or engineering squads and influencing Engineering and Product teams toward shared quality ownership.
- Demonstrated ability to improve team efficiency or output quality through strategic use of AI tools, automation, and emerging technologies.
- Strong leadership, coaching, communication, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to work effectively with both technical and nontechnical audiences.
- Strong technical judgment, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to evaluate tradeoffs, challenge assumptions, create clarity, and make decisions in ambiguous environments.
- Ability to influence cross-functional teams without relying on direct authority and drive meaningful organizational change through new processes, standards, and approaches.
- Resilience, adaptability, and a transformation mindset, with the ability to learn quickly, operate effectively in ambiguity, and build accountable and collaborative teams.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
- Compensation starting at $8,900 per month.
- Remote opportunity based in Brazil with flexibility designed to support effective work across distributed teams.
- Paid holidays and flexible, take-it-as-you-need-it scheduled time off.
- Equity participation in a rapidly growing technology company backed by leading venture capital firms.
- MacBook provided from day one, plus a $500 workspace stipend to help create an effective home-office environment.
- Opportunity to lead quality engineering transformation across multiple squads and influence organization-wide testing practices.
- Exposure to modern test automation, CI/CD, quality engineering, AI-assisted testing, and emerging technologies.
- Strong focus on leadership development, technical growth, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
- Inclusive and diverse working environment where new ideas and contributions are encouraged.