QA Lead

Key Responsibilities

1. QA Team Leadership

• Lead and mentor the QA team.
  

• Allocate testing responsibilities across QA resources.
  

• Review testing progress and quality metrics.
  

• Establish QA processes, standards and best practices.
  

• Develop the team's testing capabilities.
  

• Identify training and resource requirements.
  

• Act as the primary escalation point for QA-related issues.
  

2. Test Strategy & Planning

• Define overall test strategy for projects.
  

• Develop test plans based on requirements, risks and system complexity.
  

• Determine appropriate levels of:
  

  • Functional testing
    

  • Integration testing
    

  • Regression testing
    

  • API testing
    

  • UI testing
    

  • Cross-browser testing
    

  • Performance testing
    

  • Security testing
    

  • User acceptance support
    

• Identify high-risk business and technical workflows requiring additional coverage.
  

3. Automation & Regression

• Establish an appropriate automation strategy.
  

• Lead development and maintenance of automated regression/integration suites.
  

• Identify high-value candidates for automation.
  

• Ensure automated tests are reliable and maintainable.
  

• Integrate automation into CI/CD where appropriate.
  

• Monitor automation results and investigate failures.
  

4. Defect Management

• Own the QA defect lifecycle.
  

• Establish defect severity and priority standards.
  

• Lead defect triage with BA, Development and PM.
  

• Identify recurring defect patterns.
  

• Work with the Architect to identify technical root causes.
  

• Ensure defects are properly documented, reproduced and validated.
  

5. Release Quality & Sign-Off

• Define release testing requirements.
  

• Monitor test execution and coverage.
  

• Provide clear release-readiness status.
  

• Identify unresolved quality risks.
  

• Recommend whether releases are ready for UAT or production from a QA perspective.
  

• Ensure regression testing is completed for significant releases.
  

• Maintain release quality reports.
  

6. Collaboration with BA

• Review requirements for testability.
  

• Identify missing acceptance criteria and edge cases.
  

• Participate in requirement reviews.
  

• Ensure test scenarios reflect real business workflows.
  

• Provide feedback on ambiguous or incomplete requirements.
  

7. Collaboration with Technical Architect

• Identify technically complex and high-risk areas requiring additional testing.
  

• Coordinate integration and system-level testing.
  

• Support investigation of complex defects.
  

• Identify recurring technical defects and recommend preventive actions.
  

• Ensure new architecture and integrations have appropriate test coverage.
  

8. Collaboration with PM

• Provide accurate QA estimates and testing dependencies.
  

• Report testing progress, risks and blockers.
  

• Identify release dependencies.
  

• Maintain visibility of QA activities within Jira.
  

• Reduce the PM's need to coordinate individual testing activities.
  

9. ShapeDiver / WooCommerce Testing

Develop strong domain knowledge of the platform's critical workflows, including:

• WooCommerce product configuration
  

• ShapeDiver integration
  

• Product options and add-ons
  

• Pricing
  

• Cart and checkout
  

• ERP integration
  

• Order creation
  

• Configuration metadata
  

• Product variations/options
  

• Multi-site behaviour
  

• API integrations
  

• Payment workflows
  

Develop and maintain end-to-end regression coverage for these critical business flows.

10. External QA Engagements & Pilot Projects

• Lead QA discovery and assessment for prospective testing engagements.
  

• Understand client applications, testing requirements and quality risks.
  

• Develop pilot testing strategies and execution plans.
  

• Define scope, deliverables, resources and testing approach for QA engagements.
  

• Lead pilot execution and produce professional QA reports.
  

• Establish reusable QA frameworks and processes that can scale into larger client engagements.
  

• Participate in client QA discussions when required.
  

11. QA Metrics & Reporting

Establish meaningful QA metrics including:

• Test coverage
  

• Test execution progress
  

• Pass/fail rates
  

• Defect density
  

• Defect severity
  

• Regression results
  

• Automation coverage
  

• Defect leakage
  

• Reopened defects
  

• Release readiness
  

• QA risks
  

Provide concise reports to the CTO and PM.

12. CTO Support & Delegation

• Become the