Quality Assurance (QA) Manager

Title: Quality Assurance (QA) Manager 
Reports to: Chief Operating Officer (with close partnership to Director of Product Operations)
Type: Full-Time (Contract, with contract-to-hire potential)
Location: Remote (must overlap core hours of 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM ET)

The Role 
Terra Dotta is investing in a centralized Quality Assurance function to support our transition to a product-led operating model. This is a hands-on, working-manager role: you will lead a distributed QA team across all five of our product lines, drive adoption of a growing test automation pipeline, and establish the standards, processes, and accountability that a modern QA function needs. 

This role sits apart from Engineering by design, creating a dedicated quality voice that partners closely with Product and Engineering leadership. You will need to build credibility quickly, establish authority with a distributed team, and be comfortable holding a firm line on quality even under schedule pressure.

As our automation capabilities mature, you will also help evaluate and evolve the shape of the QA team and its vendor/contractor mix to align staffing with the coverage automation provides. This is not a role for someone who needs a fully mature QA organization already in place to be effective.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a distributed QA team, including in-house staff and external contractors/vendors, across all five Terra Dotta product lines.

• Own and scale a Playwright-based test automation pipeline integrated with our CI/CD process, partnering with our Automation Architect

• Drive full integration between our test case management platform and automated test execution and reporting 

• Establish and enforce quality gates and a clear definition of done within the CI/CD pipeline 

• Shift QA involvement upstream: reviewing user journeys and acceptance criteria before development begins, not just validating after code ships 

• Build and own a weekly quality dashboard covering defect escape rate, automation coverage, test execution pass rate, and priority-1/priority-2 defect trends 

• Own a stable, production-like QA test environment, partnering with Infrastructure/DevOps leadership 

• Scope and build an automated accessibility testing workstream (WCAG 2.2) embedded in the CI pipeline 

• Scope and build a proactive security testing workstream in partnership with our Security team 

• Evaluate current QA team structure and staffing model and recommend adjustments as automation coverage matures 

• Lead and champion the adoption of AI-assisted QA practices, including AI-generated test cases and LLM-assisted defect analysis, evolving strategy as the landscape changes 

Cross-Functional Collaboration 

• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Delivery leadership across all five product lines, including regular participation in cross-functional product team standups.

• Work closely with our Automation Architect on pipeline strategy and adoption 

• Coordinate with Infrastructure/DevOps on test environment stability and strategy 

• Partner with Security on building a proactive, automated security testing posture 

• Report into and align closely with senior Product Operations leadership 

Required Qualifications 

Experience 

• 5+ years of QA experience, including at least 2 years managing or leading a distributed QA function 

• Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks such as Playwright, Selenium, or equivalent 

• Experience with test case management platforms (e.g., TestRail) - running test cases in, reporting results out 

• Experience managing offshore or geographically distributed QA teams 

• Experience evaluating and adjusting QA team structure or staffing models, including prior experience managing organizational change within a QA function 

• Experience testing Angular or other complex single-page applications 

• Experience managing external QA vendors and/or contractor relationships 

Education 

• Bachelor's degree in a related field, or equivalent professional experience 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience in B2B SaaS environments with multi-tenant architecture and complex user roles 

• Familiarity with AI-assisted test generation tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) 

• Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions) 

• Experience building or rebuilding a QA function, including leading culture change 

• Familiarity with emerging AI-driven QA practices such as self-healing test frameworks and LLM-assisted defect pattern analysis 

• Experience with shift-left testing practices, including reviewing requirements and user journeys prior to development 

• Experience defining and enforcing quality gates and definition of done within a delivery pipeline 

• Experience building recurring quality metrics and reporting (e.g., defect escape rate, automation coverage, defect trend dashboards) 

• Higher education or immigration compliance domain knowledge is helpful, though not required 

What Success Looks Like in This Role 

• You know your team well and can speak to strengths, gaps, and development needs 

• Manual QA testers are documenting test cases in parallel with development, not after 

• Automated regression testing is running in CI/CD across multiple product lines 

• You are an active, trusted participant in cross-functional product team meetings 

• Engineering teams understand and respect the quality standards you've established 

• Accessibility and security testing workstreams are scoped and included in the automation roadmap 

• You've presented leadership with a clear view of team structure and staffing recommendations aligned to automation maturity 

Tech Environment 

Angular / PrimeNG frontend. AWS infrastructure. Jenkins CI/CD. Test case management via TestRail. Defect tracking via Jira. AI-assisted development and automation tooling (Claude Code).