Quality Assurance Manager

Position Summary

The Quality Assurance Manager manages the team responsible for the quality assurance of applications, data, processes, and systems ensuring that engineering activities are executed without defects, documented, meet functional/non-functional requirements, and conform to CNA National’s Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) requirements.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Hires, develops, coaches/mentors, and retains high-performing and ethical team members with a commitment to positive culture, accountability and strong employee engagement, diversity, and inclusivity and with an emphasis on talent management and succession planning in accordance with corporate strategic direction
• Develops and builds collaborative relationships across the organization to promote organizational effectiveness, communication and efficient resolution of testing issues
• Optimize quality assurance resource allocations to support on-time delivery in line with organization priorities
• Create, review, revise and maintain quality assurance standards, tool usage and standard operating procedures in conjunction with IT leadership
• Establish and communicate QA metrics and reporting for up and down stream stakeholders
• Establish and oversee collection and regular reporting of defect root cause analysis in collaboration with IT leadership
• Research and deploy appropriate quality assurance methodologies and tools to ensure tests identify defects.
• Research, design and build efficient automation/performance frameworks, including test tools and automated test suites that govern whole development cycle for any of our applications, based on different UI, Services/APIs and database technologies.
• Lead QA process improvement initiatives
• Keep abreast of changes in technology, standards, and relevant developments in IT & testing by maintaining professional competency through training, reading, and linkages with professional organizations
• Adhere to and enforce company policies on information security, compliance, risk, and confidentiality
• Provide emergency assistance when any IT operational related problem occurs

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems or related field.
• Any equivalent combination of education, training and/or experience that fulfills the requirements of the position will be considered.
• Minimum of 5 years of management or supervisory experience
• Minimum of 10 years of quality assurance or IT audit experience
• Experience with relational databases and web applications
• Test Case Management, Defect Tracking and Quality Reporting

Skills, Knowledge & Abilities

• Knowledge of web design and software development methodologies
• Knowledge of capabilities and limitations of modern database technologies
• Ability to identify and resolve workflow inefficiencies
• In-depth knowledge of software testing principles, methodologies, automated testing
• Adapt to Agile Testing practices
• Must be detail-oriented and have excellent analytical skills
• Ability to facilitate root cause analysis for critical defects and/or system outages
• High degree of organization, individual initiative, and personal accountability
• Must have good communication and customer service skills
• Comfortable dealing with a business environment that relies on technology as an enabler
• Balance of technical knowledge and business acumen
• Ability to operate with uncertainty and incomplete information while still moving with confidence and enthusiasm
• Applies critical thinking to maintain the right sense of urgency where and when it matters
• Proactive, self-starter with demonstrated excellence in project management and resource management / forecasting
• A background in the service industry (Insurance, Banking, Financial, other) is a plus