About the Role
We are looking for a sharp, ownership-driven Lead QA who can run a team of 4-5 QA engineers while
remaining hands-on as an individual contributor. This is a player-coach role: you will personally own test
strategy and execution for critical modules, while also leading, mentoring, and unblocking a small QA
team, and driving AI-first ways of working across the function. You deeply understand systems, identify
risks early, and hold your team to the same bar of quality and curiosity that you hold yourself to.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 4-5 QA engineers, providing technical direction and career
guidance
• Plan and distribute work across the team; balance workload against sprint and release
commitments
• Review team members' test plans, test cases, and automation code; hold the line on quality
standards
• Run 1:1s, contribute to performance reviews, and support hiring/interviewing for QA roles
• Act as the QA point of contact for developers, product managers, and delivery stakeholders




• Escalate and unblock issues for the team without slipping into micromanagement
Individual Contribution
• Own end-to-end quality for at least one critical module or product as a hands-on tester
• Design, develop, and execute comprehensive test strategies (Functional, API, UI, Regression,
E2E)
• Perform hands-on API testing using tools like Postman / Playwright / similar
• Build and maintain automation frameworks (UI/API) that the rest of the team builds on
• Identify edge cases, hidden risks, and potential production issues proactively

Process & Quality Ownership
• Own the defect triage process and root cause analysis across the team's scope
• Contribute to and oversee CI/CD pipeline integration of automated test suites
• Drive continuous improvement in QA processes, test coverage, and release quality org-wide
• Report on team quality metrics, release readiness, and risk to leadership
AI-First Quality Engineering

• Leverage AI

📌 QA Lead (Pune)
🏢 Heaptrace
📍 Pune