Job Designation: Head - Testing Centre of Excellence (Testing CoE)

Work Location: Chennai

Overall experience: 15 to 20 years, including enterprise testing leadership

Job description:

- The Head - Testing Centre of Excellence will own the enterprise-wide quality engineering and testing function for Sundaram Finance technology. The role will establish a single testing operating model across the full application estate covering in-house products, legacy platforms, digital channels, data and integration services, infrastructure-related changes and partner-delivered solutions. The position is accountable for independent quality assurance across both business-as-usual releases and the ongoing core modernisation and transformation journey.
- The leader must combine NBFC or banking domain knowledge with contemporary quality engineering expertise. The role will progressively move testing from project-end validation to continuous, risk-based quality engineering embedded across domain-driven design, specification, build, migration, release and production assurance.
- Key Responsibilities:

1. Enterprise Testing Strategy and CoE Leadership

- Define and execute the enterprise testing and quality engineering strategy, roadmap, operating model, policies, standards and governance for the complete IT application landscape.
- Build and lead the Testing CoE spanning functional testing, automation, performance,regression testing, security coordination, data validation, accessibility, compatibility, migration, resilience and production assurance.
- Establish clear engagement models for internal teams, system integrators, product partners and managed service providers, with defined entry and exit criteria, stage gates, RACI and escalation paths.
- Provide objective release-quality recommendations to Technology leadership, programme governance forums and business stakeholders, including a clear go, conditional go or no-go position.

2. Transformation and Core Modernisation Quality Assurance

- Own the end-to-end test strategy for core modernisation, including coexistence of legacy and modern platforms, phased migration, parallel runs, reconciliation, cutover and hypercare.
- Embed quality engineering into domain-driven design and specification-driven delivery by ensuring business rules, domain events, acceptance criteria, non-functional requirements and traceability are testable before build begins.
- Define testing patterns for microservices, APIs, event-driven flows, workflow orchestration, distributed transactions, observability, failure recovery and service virtualisation.
- Validate equivalence and controlled change between legacy and modernised journeys, with special emphasis on customer, contract, repayment, collections, accounting and regulatory outcomes.

3. NBFC and Banking Domain Assurance

- Lead quality assurance across lending journeys such as lead and enquiry, customer onboarding and KYC, credit assessment, sanction, documentation, disbursement, repayment, collections, foreclosure, repossession, NPA and stressed-asset management.
- Ensure coverage for asset finance, term lending, working capital, leasing, deposits, partner and dealer journeys, branch operations, customer service, accounting, treasury and regulatory reporting where applicable.
- Ensure test scenarios address interest, charges, taxation, delinquency, moratorium, restructuring, allocation and appropriation, bureau reporting, customer communications and maker-checker controls.
- Partner with Business, Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit and Information Security to translate RBI requirements, internal policies and audit observations into verifiable test conditions and evidence.

4. Test Governance, Planning and Control

- Institute an enterprise test lifecycle integrated with SDLC stage gates, release governance,



change management and configuration management.
- Approve master test plans, risk-based coverage, environment readiness, test data plans, defect thresholds, exit criteria and production-readiness evidence for major releases.
- Establish end-to-end requirements traceability from business capability and specification through test cases, defects, evidence and production release.
- Create governance dashboards covering scope coverage, execution progress, defect leakage, escaped defects, automation coverage, flaky tests, performance risk, ageing and closure quality.

5. Quality Engineering, Automation and Toolchain

- Define a layered automation strategy covering unit, component, API, contract, integration, user-interface, regression, data and end-to-end tests, with maximum automation at lower test layers.
- Industrialise reusable frameworks, test assets, synthetic data, service virtualisation, CI/CD quality gates and automated evidence generation.
- Guide selection and effective use of tools chain, DevOps, and enterprise test-management platforms.
- Introduce AI-assisted test design, impact analysis, test-data generation, defect triage and regression optimisation with controls for accuracy, privacy, security, explainability and human review.

6. Non-Functional and Resilience Testing

- Own performance engineering for critical journeys, including workload modelling, baseline, load, stress, endurance, volume, scalability and capacity validation against agreed service-level objectives.
- Coordinate security testing with Information Security covering SAST, DAST, SCA, API security, penetration testing and remediation verification without diluting independent security accountability.
- Validate availability, failover, disaster recovery, backup restoration, degraded-mode operation, batch recovery, observability and operational readiness for critical services.
- Ensure customer-facing applications meet agreed usability, browser and device compatibility, accessibility and response-time expectations.

7. Test Data, Environments and Migration Assurance

- Establish controlled test-data management covering masking, subsetting, synthetic data, refresh, retention, access, lineage and reconciliation in line with privacy and security requirements.
- Drive stable, production-like test environments with clear ownership, configuration baselines, dependency mapping, booking, monitoring and incident resolution.
- Own data migration assurance from source profiling and rule validation through trial migrations, reconciliation, exception management, cutover certification and post-migration verification.
- Ensure financial and operational reconciliation is complete across contracts, balances, schedules, receipts, charges, accounting entries and regulatory outputs.

8. Production Quality and Continuous Improvement

- Establish defect prevention, root-cause analysis and corrective-action practices based on escaped-defect patterns, incident trends and audit findings.
- Define production validation, smoke testing, business verification, monitoring checkpoints and hypercare exit criteria for high-risk releases.
- Create a quality maturity model and improvement roadmap, benchmark teams, publish scorecards and drive measurable improvement each quarter.
- Promote shift-left and shift-right practices while maintaining independent assurance for critical financial and regulatory changes.

9. People, Partner and Financial Management

- Build the Testing CoE organisation,



define roles and competencies, plan capacity across run and change portfolios, recruit critical skills and create succession plans.
- Coach test managers, quality engineers, automation engineers, performance engineers and domain testers; establish learning paths and communities of practice.
- Manage testing partners and system integrators through measurable outcomes, productivity, quality, knowledge transfer, SLA and commercial governance.
- Own testing budgets, tool licensing and partner spend, and demonstrate value through risk reduction, cycle-time improvement, automation and defect prevention.

Expected Outcomes / Success Measures:

- Consistent enterprise testing standards and independent release-quality decisions across all applications and programmes.
- End-to-end traceability and risk-based coverage for critical business, financial, customer and regulatory requirements.
- Reduced production defect leakage, repeat incidents and emergency fixes, with measurable improvement in defect removal efficiency.
- Faster and more predictable release cycles through automation, reusable assets, stable environments and early defect prevention.
- Controlled modernisation cutovers with proven data reconciliation, business continuity, resilience and customer-impact safeguards.
- A scalable Testing CoE with the domain knowledge and engineering capability required to support Sundaram Finance transformation.

Skills / Capabilities Required:

- Deep leadership experience in enterprise testing, quality engineering and managed testing services for a large NBFC, bank or regulated financial-services organisation.
- Strong understanding of lending, asset finance, deposits, collections, customer and partner journeys, accounting integration, regulatory reporting and branch operations.
- Experience leading quality assurance for large transformation programmes involving core-platform modernisation, legacy replacement, microservices, APIs, cloud or hybrid platforms and data migration.
- Ability to design a Testing CoE operating model, governance, organisation structure, competency framework, sourcing strategy, metrics and multi-year roadmap.
- Strong command of functional, automation, API, contract, integration, performance, resilience, migration, data and production-assurance testing.
- Working knowledge of Agile, DevSecOps, CI/CD, domain-driven design, specification-driven development and risk-based testing.
- Ability to challenge business, architecture, engineering and vendor teams constructively and make evidence-based release recommendations.
- Executive communication, stakeholder influence, vendor governance, commercial management and team-building capability.

Qualifications and Preferred Certifications:

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology or a related discipline.
- 15 to 20 years of relevant experience, with substantial leadership accountability for enterprise testing and quality engineering.
- Test Management certification is preferred. Certifications in Agile, SAFe, DevOps, cloud, ITIL, Six Sigma or quality management are advantageous.
- Knowledge of ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119, ISO 9001, OWASP testing practices and regulatory expectations applicable to RBI-regulated financial entities is desirable.

Leadership Competencies:

- Strategic thinking with strong execution discipline and attention to evidence.
- Independent judgement, risk orientation and willingness to escalate material quality concerns.
- Ability to operate across Business, Digital, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Audit and partner organisations.
- Pragmatic transformation leadership that balances speed, control, customer impact and operational continuity.
- High ownership, integrity, communication maturity and the ability to develop senior testing leaders.

📌 Head - Testing Centre of Excellence (Chennai)
🏢 Sundaram Finance
📍 Chennai