Quality Assurance Engineering Manager
We are standing up a dedicated QA automation function, and we're looking for a QA Engineering Manager to build and lead it from the ground up. This is a rare opportunity to shape a quality practice from scratch: you'll choose the tooling, set the standards, hire the team, and define how AI fits into how we test.
This is a hands-on, player-coach role. You'll split your time roughly 50/50 between leading the team and doing the work yourself: setting direction, hiring, and coaching on one side, and writing automated tests, building framework components, and reviewing code on the other. You'll lead by example and stay close enough to the code to make sound calls and earn the trust of the engineers you lead.
In your first 90 days, you'll start with discovery: partnering with our Principal AI Engineer and AI team to understand existing AI tools and practices, and working with engineering teams to understand current QA practices and define how QA and engineering will collaborate going forward. In parallel, you'll confirm prerequisites (environments, CI/CD, critical user journeys), select your tooling and framework, and stand up a proof-of-concept suite on the highest-risk flows. By the end of year one, you'll have delivered a working, trusted automation suite on critical flows, a small high-performing team, a quality metrics dashboard in active use, and a clear plan for AI adoption.
What You Will Do
- Define and own the quality engineering strategy and roadmap across our products.
- Stay hands-on: personally write automated tests, build framework components, and review code alongside the team (roughly half your time).
- Select the test automation tooling and framework, and set the standards squads build on.
- Integrate automated testing into our CI/CD pipelines and partner with DevOps on stable, repeatable deployments.
- Define quality gates: what blocks a merge and what blocks a release, aligned with engineering leadership and risk.
- Drive a risk-based approach to testing so effort goes where it protects clients most.
- Push tests down the stack (API before UI), drive down the flaky-test rate, and enable squads so the practice doesn't depend on any one person.
- Hire, coach, and grow a team of automation engineers, and raise testing discipline across product squads.
- Own quality metrics and a dashboard that leadership trusts, providing objective signals for go/no-go release decisions.
- Evaluate and adopt AI-assisted testing tools (test generation, self-healing tests, defect triage, agentic testing) through a practical, hybrid model, while keeping a human-in-the-loop standard so AI-generated tests and code are reviewed, not trusted blindly.
What You Bring
- 7+ years in software quality or engineering, including 3+ years leading and growing engineers.
- A track record of building or significantly maturing a test automation practice.
- Current, hands-on coding ability: you can build framework components and write automated tests yourself, and you want to keep doing so in this role.
- Strong technical judgement on automation frameworks, CI/CD, and test architecture, backed by recent hands-on experience.
- Fluency with modern automation tooling (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium) and CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI).
- Experience defining quality metrics and using them to influence release decisions.
- Clear communicator who can translate quality risk into terms leadership and product can act on.
- Hands-on understanding of how AI is changing testing, with sound judgement on where it helps and where it doesn't. Experience evaluating or adopting AI-assisted QA tooling or a credible plan for doing so.
- Familiarity with testing AI or LLM features (evaluation harnesses, golden datasets, guardrails, bias and accuracy checks), or the ability to get there quickly.
Nice to Have
- Familiarity with Claude and Claude Code.
- Background as an SDET or automation engineer earlier in your career.
- Experience introducing quality practices into an organisation that did not have them before.
- Experience in a regulated or high-reliability domain (utilities, fintech, healthcare or similar).
Our Hiring Process:
👋 Stage 1: Recruiter Interview (45 minutes)
We'll dive into your professional background and experience, share more about SpryPoint and the role, and answer any burning questions you might have.
👋 Stage 2: Hiring Manager Interview (45 minutes)
This is a great chance to meet with the Director of Software Engineering and dive deep into your career goals, work experience, and how we can support your growth. We encourage you to ask questions to learn more about the opportunity.
🧑💻 Stage 3: Technical Assignment
You'll complete a technical exercise relevant to the role.
👥 Stage 4: Final Interviews (60 minutes)
You'll walk the team through your technical assignment and showcase your skills. This is also a great opportunity to meet more of the team and see if there's a strong team fit!
🚀 Stage 5: References and Offer
We'll check your references to confirm all the great things we've learned about you. If all goes well, we’ll be thrilled to extend an offer and welcome you to the team!
Skills
As published by lever · 12 questions · 4 written answers
Basics
Which location are you applying for?, Resume/CV, Full name, Pronouns, Email, Phone, Current location, Current company, LinkedIn URL, GitHub URL, Portfolio URL
Short answers (1)
- What is your expected salary range for a full-time permanent position at SpryPoint?
Pick from a list (7)
- At SpryPoint, we embrace AI and automation - and we know you do too. Feel free to use AI tools to help with your application and interview prep. We're actually interested in how you leverage them. That said, your application should authentically reflect you - your real experiences, perspective, and voice. We value transparency and trust from day one. We'll personally review your application and conduct live interviews to understand who you really are. If we discover misrepresentation at any stage, we'll remove you from consideration for this and future roles at SpryPoint. optional
- Are you currently located in Canada or the U.S? optional
- What U.S state or Canadian province/territory do you currently live in? optional
- Which time zone are you currently in? optional
- Please select your work authorization below: optional
- How did you learn about the position?
- Are you currently writing code/tests hands-on in your current role, and do you want that to remain a core part of your job going forward?
Written answers (4)
- Why are you interested in joining the team at SpryPoint?
- Is there anything you'd like to clarify about your previous experience, short stints or gaps in your resume? Let us know here! (Our goal is to better understand your story in order to see the full picture. No judgments here—we are guided by our company value of Lead with Kindness to provide each candidate with an equal opportunity to be successful.) optional
- Have you personally built or significantly matured a test automation practice from an early or immature state (as opposed to joining and maintaining an already-established automation team)? Tell us more!
- This role requires evaluating and adopting AI-assisted testing tools (e.g., AI test generation, self-healing tests, defect triage), not just using AI casually, but making judgment calls on where it helps and where it doesn't. Have you evaluated or adopted AI-assisted QA tooling in a real work setting?