Quality Practice Leader

Quality Practice Leader

The Quality Practice Leader drives a culture of quality and continuous improvement across the entire organisation through effective automation, process reliability, stakeholder engagement, and alignment with organizational priorities. A balanced hands-on and strategic role requiring deep expertise in:

• engineering and test automation
• comprehensive understanding of software delivery processes
• mastery of testing complexities.

This role is pivotal in defining and overseeing enterprise-wide quality processes, including test strategy and automation best practices, to ensure consistent, high-quality releases across diverse platforms and business applications. It combines hands-on involvement in shaping test plans for projects and programmes with strategic leadership that influences and guides testers and quality engineers through expertise, collaboration, and direction.

Strategy & Governance

• Define and maintain the enterprise-wide test strategy and develop a comprehensive roadmap that addresses foundational testing practices, automation maturity, and continuous improvement initiatives across all platforms and products.
• Establish, implement, and govern quality standards, quality gates, Definition of Done (DoD), and release criteria across both Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies.

Technical Leadership

• Work hands-on with test automation frameworks including Cucumber, Jmeter, Jest, Postman, Playwright and etc contributing to framework design, code reviews, and technical implementation (50% hands-on technical work).
• Lead the design and evolution of test automation architecture and best practices for web applications, mobile, APIs, microservices, and cloud-native solutions.
• Rationalise and consolidate testing tools across organisation.

Stakeholder Engagement & Change Management

• Collaborate closely with project and program teams to assess, guide, and oversee individual test plans, ensuring alignment with organizational strategy, sufficiency of coverage, and delivery of quality outcomes.
• Engage with cross-functional stakeholders including engineering leads, DevOps leads, product managers, and project management teams to align quality practices with business priorities.
• Drive change management initiatives to mature, transform, and establish quality practices across the organization, navigating resistance and building buy-in through expertise and results.
• Champion a culture of quality throughout the engineering organization, advocating for quality-first approaches in architectural decisions, feature development, and release planning.

Measurement & Risk

• Define, track, and report on comprehensive quality metrics and KPIs including test coverage, automation coverage, defect escape rates, release quality, and cycle time to engineering leadership.
• Assess risks in testing approaches across projects and provide strategic guidance to mitigate quality risks before production releases.

Leadership & Capability

• Influence and mentor quality engineers and testers across the organization, building capability through coaching, knowledge sharing, and hands-on collaboration.
• Participate in technical forums, architecture reviews, and planning sessions to ensure quality considerations are integrated early in the development lifecycle.

Experience

• 8+ years of hands-on engineering and quality engineering experience with demonstrated technical depth in test automation and software testing
• 3+ years in practice leadership, quality leadership, or similar roles driving quality initiatives across multiple teams or organizations
• Deep expertise in test automation frameworks and tools including Cucumber, Jmeter, Jest, Postman with proven ability to design and implement automation solutions
• Strong experience with Azure DevOps, AWS cloud platforms, microservices architecture, and modern web technologies including React
• Demonstrated ability to balance strategic thinking with practical, hands-on technical contribution in a 50-50 capacity
• Proven track record of influencing and leading without direct authority, successfully guiding distributed teams toward quality excellence
• Experience working in both Agile and Waterfall delivery methodologies with ability to adapt quality approaches accordingly
• Experience establishing quality gates, Definition of Done, release criteria, and governance frameworks

Attributes

• Strong change management skills with experience maturing, transforming, or establishing quality practices in complex organizational environments
• Excellent collaboration and stakeholder management skills with ability to engage effectively with engineering leads, DevOps, product, and project management
• Highly skilled and opinionated about testing approaches, with ability to articulate and defend quality positions while remaining pragmatic
• Strong analytical skills with experience defining and reporting on quality metrics, KPIs, and using data to drive improvement
• Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate complex technical concepts to varied audiences

On Offer

• Melbourne CBD location
• Salary 235K~250K + super + bonus
• Hybrid work