QA CENTER OF EXCELLENCE (COE) HEAD

Position Title

QA Center of Excellence (COE) Head

Experience Required

8–12 years in Software QA/Testing (incl. 3–4+ years in a QA leadership/COE role)

Reporting To

Delivery Head

Employment Type

Full-time

Location

Gurgaon Onsite

Position Overview The QA COE Head will be the single point of ownership for quality assurance on this Managed QA Services engagement — responsible for defining the test strategy, running client governance, leading the delivery team, and building a Center of Excellence that raises quality and automation maturity across the account over time. This is a client-facing leadership role combining hands-on QA depth with program and people management.

Key Responsibilities

QA Strategy & Governance

- Own the end-to-end QA/test strategy for the engagement across functional, regression, automation, performance, security, and API testing.
- Establish and run the test governance framework — entry/exit criteria, quality gates, and release sign-off process.
- Define and track SLAs/KPIs committed in the contract (defect turnaround, cycle time, automation coverage %, on-time sign-off) and report against them.
- Build and continuously evolve the QA Center of Excellence — standards, reusable frameworks, accelerators, and playbooks that can scale across applications and future engagements.

Delivery Leadership

- Lead end-to-end QA delivery for the account — planning, staffing, execution, and monitoring across all in-scope applications.
- Own the test automation roadmap and drive year-over-year improvement in automation coverage and ROI.
- Oversee the defect management lifecycle — triage cadence, root-cause analysis, and leakage/escape-rate reduction.
- Manage the transition-in plan when onboarding new scope or replacing an incumbent vendor, including knowledge transfer and shadow-run-lead progression.

Client & Stakeholder Management





- Act as the single point of ownership for QA in client governance forums — daily stand-ups, weekly ops reviews, monthly steering committees, and quarterly business reviews.
- Present quality dashboards, metrics, and continuous-improvement plans to senior client and internal stakeholders.
- Manage escalations end-to-end and drive resolution within agreed SLAs.

Team & Resource Management

- Build, mentor, and manage a multi-disciplinary QA team spanning manual, automation, performance, and security testing.
- Define the role-wise staffing plan, onshore-offshore mix, and ramp-up/ramp-down approach in line with commercial commitments.
- Drive hiring, onboarding, skill development, and retention for the QA pod; manage attrition backfill within agreed timelines.

Tools, Process & Innovation

- Evaluate, select, and implement the QA toolchain — test management, automation, performance, and defect tracking tools — in line with client constraints and existing licenses.
- Drive adoption of AI-assisted testing, self-healing automation, and shift-left practices to improve quality and reduce cycle time.
- Own continuous-improvement initiatives and any contracted cost-optimization/productivity commitments.

Compliance & Risk Management

- Ensure QA delivery adheres to applicable regulatory and data-privacy requirements (e.g., data residency, PII masking, industry-specific mandates).
- Maintain business-continuity readiness for QA delivery and manage exit/transition-out planning when required.

Required Skills & Experience

- 8–12 years of total experience in software QA/testing, including at least 3–4 years leading a QA practice, Center of Excellence,



or large test team (15+ members).
- Strong hands-on grounding across manual testing, test automation (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or Appium), performance testing (JMeter, LoadRunner, or k6), and API testing.
- Prior experience running a Managed Services / Testing CoE engagement, ideally in an outsourced or vendor-delivery model with contractual SLAs.
- Solid understanding of Agile/DevOps practices and experience integrating automation into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI).
- Track record of defining, tracking, and reporting SLAs/KPIs for QA delivery in a client-facing role.
- Hands-on experience with test management and defect-tracking tools (JIRA, Azure DevOps, qTest, Zephyr, or HP ALM).
- Exposure to security testing practices (SAST/DAST) and test-data management, including PII masking/synthetic data generation.
- Proven people-management experience — hiring, mentoring, performance appraisals, and career pathing.
- Excellent stakeholder management and executive-level communication skills; comfortable presenting to senior client leadership.
- Domain experience relevant to the client's industry is an advantage.

Education Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.

Preferred Certifications

- ISTQB Advanced Level / Expert Level (Test Manager or Test Analyst)
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or Secure certification
- Six Sigma Green/Black Belt (for continuous-improvement-heavy engagements)
- Cloud or automation-tool certifications relevant to the client's tech stack

Key Attributes

- Strategic thinker with strong hands-on execution ability
- Data-driven decision-maker who is comfortable owning numbers and SLAs
- Strong leadership and team-building instincts
- Executive presence with polished written and verbal communication
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity during transition/ramp-up phases

📌 QA COE Head (Gurugram)
🏢 AIonOS
📍 Gurugram