QA Lead

Responsibilities:

• Lead the Quality Assurance and Testing function for large-scale government and PSU digital transformation programs. Responsible for defining testing strategy, managing functional and non-functional testing, ensuring product quality, managing test teams, and supporting successful production deployments.
• Primary Objective: Ensure delivery of defect-free, secure, scalable, and business-compliant applications by implementing robust testing processes, governance controls, and quality assurance frameworks across the software development lifecycle.
• Testing Leadership Responsibilities: Define enterprise testing strategy, test governance framework, quality standards, testing methodologies, test metrics, release readiness criteria, and quality assurance processes.
• Test Planning and Management: Prepare Master Test Plans, Test Strategies, Test Schedules, Resource Plans, Estimation Models, Defect Management Plans, and Release Readiness Reports.
• Quality Assurance Governance: Define quality gates across requirement, design, development, testing, deployment, and production support phases.
• Testing Lifecycle Management: Lead complete testing lifecycle, including test planning, test design, test execution, defect management, re-testing, regression testing, UAT support, production validation, and hypercare support.
• Functional Testing: Validate business processes, workflows, integrations, reporting, user journeys, and application functionality against approved requirements.
• Automation Testing: Define and implement automation testing frameworks and maximize automation coverage across web applications, APIs, and enterprise platforms.
• API Testing: Manage testing of REST APIs, SOAP services, middleware interfaces, integration services, and third-party integrations.
• Performance Testing: Lead performance, load, scalability, endurance, stress, volume, and benchmark testing for large-scale applications.
• Security Testing Coordination: Coordinate Vulnerability Assessment, Penetration Testing (VAPT), Secure Configuration Reviews, and OWASP compliance validation.
• Integration Testing: Manage SIT across multiple applications, middleware platforms, databases, APIs, and external government systems.
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Facilitate UAT planning, execution support, defect management, stakeholder coordination, and sign-off processes.
• Production Readiness Assessment: Conduct release readiness reviews, deployment quality validation, defect closure verification, smoke testing, and go-live certification.
• Defect Management: Define defect lifecycle, severity classification, root cause analysis, defect leakage monitoring, and quality improvement initiatives.
• Non-Functional Testing: Manage performance testing, security testing, usability testing, compatibility testing, failover testing, resiliency testing, and DR testing.

Requirements:

• Government Application Testing Experience: Experience testing Citizen Service Portals, Workflow Systems, Grievance Platforms, Regulatory Systems, Utility Platforms, Education Systems, Healthcare Systems, Land Record Systems, Public Finance Systems, and e-Governance applications.
• Government Ecosystem Validation: Experience validating integrations with Aadhaar, DigiLocker, eKYC, payment gateways, GIS systems, SMS gateways, email services, SSO solutions, ERP, HRMS, and DMS platforms.
• Mandatory Government/PSU Experience: Minimum 8+ years of experience testing government, PSU, public sector, smart governance, digital India, or e-governance applications.
• Mandatory Transformation Program Experience: Must have successfully served as test lead, QA lead, test manager, or quality assurance manager in at least 3-4 large-scale government or PSU digital transformation programs.
• Mandatory End-to-End Delivery Experience: Must have managed testing activities across requirements validation, test planning, SIT, UAT, performance testing, deployment validation, production rollout, and hypercare phases.
• Mandatory Go-Live Experience: Must have provided release readiness certification, production deployment support, go-live validation, smoke testing, stabilization support, and production sign-off for enterprise-scale government applications.
• Project Scale Requirements: Experience testing large-scale applications involving multi-department workflows, state-wide or national deployments, citizen-facing systems serving 1 million+ users, or programs exceeding ₹50 crore TCV.
• Test Management Tools: JIRA, Azure DevOps, HP ALM/Quality Center, TestRail, Zephyr, qTest, Xray, and Confluence.
• Automation Tools: Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Appium, ReadyAPI, Rest Assured, and Robot Framework.
• API Testing Tools: Postman, SOAP UI, ReadyAPI, Swagger, REST Assured.
• Performance Testing Tools: JMeter, LoadRunner, NeoLoad, BlazeMeter, Gatling.
• Database Testing Skills: Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, MongoDB; ability to validate database transactions, stored procedures, and data reconciliation.
• Security Testing Knowledge: OWASP Top 10, Vulnerability Assessment, Penetration Testing Coordination, Application Security Validation, API Security Testing.
• Cloud and Modern Application Testing: Experience testing cloud-native applications, microservices, container-based applications, Kubernetes deployments, and API-led architectures.
• Development Methodologies: Agile, Scrum, DevSecOps, Waterfall, Hybrid Delivery Models.
• Fixed Price Project Experience: Proven experience managing testing activities in Fixed Price Project (FPP) environments, ensuring quality deliverables within committed timelines and contractual milestones.
• Team Management Experience: Experience leading test managers, test engineers, automation engineers, performance testers, UAT coordinators, and vendor testing teams.
• Reporting and Governance: Expertise in Quality Dashboards, Defect Analytics, Test Coverage Reporting, Release Reports, KPI Monitoring, and Executive Status Reporting.
• Leadership Skills: Quality Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Analytical Thinking, Risk Management, Team Development, Communication, Escalation Management, and Decision Making.
• Educational Qualifications: B. E. /B. Tech/MCA/M. Tech or equivalent qualification from a recognized institution.
• Preferred Certifications: ISTQB Advanced Test Manager, ISTQB Test Manager, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), SAFe Agilist, PMP, Agile Testing Certification.
• Desired Competencies: Attention to Detail, Quality Mindset, Process Orientation, Problem Solving, Customer Focus, Collaboration, Planning and Execution, Governance Excellence.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Defect Leakage Rate, Test Coverage %, Automation Coverage %, UAT Acceptance Rate, Production Defect Density, Release Success Rate, Test Execution Adherence, Customer Satisfaction, and Quality Compliance Score.