QA Automation Lead

A named leader by Forrester in the sales performance management space, Varicent was founded in 2005 when we pioneered sales performance management software. Evolving quickly to become the fastest growing software company in North America according to Deloitte’s Fast 50 in 2010, Varicent was acquired by IBM in 2012 and has since been re-founded as an independent global business serving mid-size and enterprise clients with our full suite of solutions to assist in smarter territory and quota planning, efficient lead to revenue operations, and the fastest and most flexible way to pay sellers accurately and on-time. We are looking for talented, driven people that can make an impact across our organization. As a QA Automation Team Lead on the Sales Planning team you will be growing and leading a team of functional testers and test engineers. You will also be responsible for managing releases of the Sales Planning product, making "Go/No Go" decisions for features to ensure that the product as a whole lives up to your high standards of quality. As an organization embracing the "Shift Left" strategy for QA, you will be involved through all phases of development and will work with Product Managers, Designers, and Engineers starting from the early stages of development to ensure the team can test early and often. Join a high-performing team in a growth stage tech company that is working to continuously reflect and improve on how we make software. The Sales Planning team values high levels of technical competency and the ability to react quickly and come up with solutions to the challenges of a rapidly growing team. **What you will do**: - Leading a growing team of manual QA analysts and test engineers, with the ability to attract and retain talented team members. - Be part of the critical path throughout the entire software development process. You will be leading your team to help spec out new features with the Product team, develop acceptance criteria, advocate for issue/defect prioritization, and play a leading role in release management. - Execute and improve our release process, pushing our CI/CD pipeline to a greater maturity. - Evaluate and implement the latest frameworks and services to write automated end-to-end, integration, and performance tests. - Review, update, and have an opinion on quality assurance reports and KPIs - Coordinate with Product, Design, and Engineering teams to set out timelines and be a champion for quality. - Be a leading voice in shaping processes in the development team to "Shift Left", and moving quality activities to earlier stages of feature development. - Stay up-to-date with the latest developments in testing procedures and tools and create a roadmap for quality and lead the team in initiatives to continuously improve. **Success Outcomes**: - ** In 1-3 Months You Will**: - Be trained on the product and participate in multiple releases in ever-increasing roles of responsibility. - Work with Product, Design, and Engineering teams during early stages of feature development to formulate test plans and establish timelines. - Identify opportunities for introduction of new processes or improvement to existing ones processes and implement them. - Build rapport with your QA team members and contribute to the E2E automation environment. - ** In 3-8 Months You Will**: - Identify success metrics, current shortfalls, and work towards constant improvement. - Work ahead of the roadmap with Product and Design teams to generate and maintain a healthy backlog of work items. - Lead the building and deployment of QA automation projects with your team. - ** In 8+ Months You Will**: - Proactively identify opportunities for process change in the team, and work with stakeholders to continuously improve workflows and react to emerging challenges. **What you will bring**: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related work experience in a quality assurance role. - 8+ years of relevant QA experience on a customer-facing web product, preferably in the early stages of a new product or a start-up environment. - 2+ years of experience leading a QA team or managing the careers of direct reports at different levels of career development. - Experience with agile methodologies and a holistic team-based approach to quality. - Experience with modern automated testing tools such as Playwright, Cypress, TestCafe, Selenium, other similar frameworks/libraries. - Proficiency in JavaScript, with some knowledge of modern JavaScript development frameworks (React, TypeScript, NodeJS) - Excellent analytical and troubleshooting abilities. - Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills. - Ability to handle stressful situations and multiple projects and collaborate with cross-functional teams such as product management, design, and engineering.