Quality Practice Leader
The Quality Practice Leader
drives a culture of quality and continuous improvement across the entire organisation through effective automation, process reliability, stakeholder engagement, and alignment with organizational priorities. A balanced hands-on and strategic role requiring deep expertise in:
- engineering and test automation
- comprehensive understanding of software delivery processes
- mastery of testing complexities.
This role is pivotal in defining and overseeing enterprise-wide quality processes, including test strategy and automation best practices, to ensure consistent, high-quality releases across diverse platforms and business applications. It combines hands-on involvement in shaping test plans for projects and programmes with strategic leadership that influences and guides testers and quality engineers through expertise, collaboration, and direction.
Strategy & Governance
- Define and maintain the enterprise-wide test strategy and develop a comprehensive roadmap that addresses foundational testing practices, automation maturity, and continuous improvement initiatives across all platforms and products.
- Establish, implement, and govern quality standards, quality gates, Definition of Done (DoD), and release criteria across both Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies.
Technical Leadership
- Work hands-on with test automation frameworks including Cucumber, Jmeter, Jest, Postman, Playwright and etc contributing to framework design, code reviews, and technical implementation (50% hands-on technical work).
- Lead the design and evolution of test automation architecture and best practices for web applications, mobile, APIs, microservices, and cloud-native solutions.
- Rationalise and consolidate testing tools across organisation.
Stakeholder Engagement & Change Management
- Collaborate closely with project and program teams to assess, guide, and oversee individual test plans, ensuring alignment with organizational strategy, sufficiency of coverage, and delivery of quality outcomes.
- Engage with cross-functional stakeholders including engineering leads, DevOps leads, product managers, and project management teams to align quality practices with business priorities.
- Drive change management initiatives to mature, transform, and establish quality practices across the organization, navigating resistance and building buy-in through expertise and results.
- Champion a culture of quality throughout the engineering organization, advocating for quality-first approaches in architectural decisions, feature development, and release planning.
Measurement & Risk
- Define, track, and report on comprehensive quality metrics and KPIs including test coverage, automation coverage, defect escape rates, release quality, and cycle time to engineering leadership.
- Assess risks in testing approaches across projects and provide strategic guidance to mitigate quality risks before production releases.
Leadership & Capability
- Influence and mentor quality engineers and testers across the organization, building capability through coaching, knowledge sharing, and hands-on collaboration.
- Participate in technical forums, architecture reviews, and planning sessions to ensure quality considerations are integrated early in the development lifecycle.
Experience
- 8+ years of hands-on engineering and quality engineering experience with demonstrated technical depth in test automation and software testing
- 3+ years in practice leadership, quality leadership, or similar roles driving quality initiatives across multiple teams or organizations
- Deep expertise in test automation frameworks and tools including Cucumber, Jmeter, Jest, Postman with proven ability to design and implement automation solutions
- Strong experience with Azure DevOps, AWS cloud platforms, microservices architecture, and modern web technologies including React
- Demonstrated ability to balance strategic thinking with practical, hands-on technical contribution in a 50-50 capacity
- Proven track record of influencing and leading without direct authority, successfully guiding distributed teams toward quality excellence
- Experience working in both Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies with ability to adapt quality approaches accordingly
- Experience establishing quality gates, Definition of Done, release criteria, and governance frameworks
Attributes
- Strong change management skills with experience maturing, transforming, or establishing quality practices in complex organizational environments
- Excellent collaboration and stakeholder management skills with ability to engage effectively with engineering leads, DevOps, product, and project management
- Highly skilled and opinionated about testing approaches, with ability to articulate and defend quality positions while remaining pragmatic
- Strong analytical skills with experience defining and reporting on quality metrics, KPIs, and using data to drive improvement
- Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate complex technical concepts to varied audiences
On Offer
- Melbourne CBD location
- Salary 235K~250K + super + bonus
- Hybrid work
