Job Overview
We are seeking an experienced and visionary Principal Engineering Manager – Quality Engineering to lead and scale quality engineering practices for our AI-driven cloud operations platform.
This role is responsible for driving the organization-wide quality strategy, building high-performing teams, and ensuring the delivery of reliable, scalable, and high-quality products in a fast-paced SaaS environment. The ideal candidate combines technical depth, leadership excellence, and strategic thinking to establish quality engineering as a core competitive advantage.
Key Responsibilities
- Drive and evolve the organization-wide quality engineering strategy for our cloud-native SaaS platform
- Lead and standardize quality platforms, automation toolchains, and engineering best practices across teams in collaboration with platform and engineering groups
- Establish and govern quality gates, release processes, and reporting standards to ensure consistent delivery quality
- Define and track quality metrics and KPIs (e.g., defect leakage, coverage, release confidence) to drive continuous improvement
- Build, mentor, and scale high-performing quality engineering teams across multiple pods
- Drive hiring, org design, career development, and performance management for the QE function
- Lead the evolution of scalable automation frameworks and quality platforms across UI, API, and integration layers
- Define and implement test strategies for microservices-based and distributed systems
- Ensure effective integration of quality engineering within CI/CD pipelines with strong quality gates
- Drive API-first testing strategies, including contract and schema validation at scale
- Leverage observability (logs, metrics, traces) to enable production validation and improve system reliability (shift-right)
- Influence architecture and design decisions to improve testability, scalability, and overall system quality
- Partner with Engineering, Product, and Platform teams to embed quality practices early in the development lifecycle (shift-left)
- Support and evolve approaches for testing AI/ML-driven features, including validation of non-deterministic outputs
- Define and oversee performance and load testing strategies for distributed systems (k6, Locust, Gatling, etc.)
- Collaborate with SRE and infrastructure teams on test environments, tooling, and cloud-based execution
- Contribute to strategic planning and tooling decisions for quality engineering
Must Have
- 12-16 years of experience in quality engineering / test automation, with 5+ leadership experience
- Proven experience managing and scaling Quality Engineering teams (10+ members preferred)
- Experience leading modernization/migration initiatives (e.g., legacy to modern automation frameworks, tooling consolidation, platform upgrades)
- Strong programming background in Python, Java, or JavaScript
- Hands-on experience with modern test automation frameworks (Playwright/Cypress, Pytest or equivalent)
- Strong expertise in API testing and distributed systems validation
- Experience working with CI/CD pipelines and quality gates (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)
- Solid understanding of cloud-native architectures (microservices, containers, distributed systems)
- Experience with Docker and Kubernetes-based environments
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS preferred)
- Experience with contract testing / schema validation (OpenAPI, Pact)
- Working knowledge of observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch)
- Experience with performance and load testing for distributed systems (k6, Locust, Gatling, etc.)
- Strong understanding of SDLC, Agile, and DevOps practices
- Familiarity with AI-driven or intelligent test automation tools
Good to Have
- Experience with AI/ML-driven systems or data-intensive platforms, including testing strategies
- Knowledge of event-driven architectures (Kafka, messaging systems)
- Exposure to security testing and compliance standards (OWASP, SOC2, etc.)
Leadership & Soft Skills
- Strong leadership and people management capabilities
- Ability to influence cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders
- Strong decision-making and problem-solving skills
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
Experience
- 12-16 years of experience in quality engineering / test automation
- 5+ years of experience in engineering management / leadership roles
- Proven track record of driving quality transformation initiatives at scale
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field