Test Practice Lead

Overview:
**Role Overview - QA/QE practice lead**

With the increasing focus in software delivery on quality at speed, we are seeing an increase in our requirement to deliver QA and QE services. Generally, this is leading to an increasing demand for technical testing such as performance testing, security testing in the pipeline and CI platforms with an emphasis on earlier test automation.

To meet this demand, we need to grow and expand our QA/QE practice, not just in the number of people in the practice but in the technical and project delivery skills they have. To enable us this growth we have created this role to lead our QA/QE practice.

The role will be quite varied and will fall under 5 broad areas:

- Leadership and development of the QA/QE practice team and offering.
- Day to day management of the QA/QE team and practice.
- Delivery governance of QA/QE practice.
- Technical pre-sales, including proof of concepts.
- Delivering consultancy on QA/QE with our existing and new clients.

You will be working with a variety of clients across multiple industry sectors, either bringing in new services or improving the delivery of existing projects.

**Key responsibilities**

**Leadership and development of the QA/QE practice team and offering**:

- In conjunction with the Belgium managing director and regional heads of QA & QE develop the strategy for the QA/QE practice to expand its capabilities and then deliver the action plan derived from this.
- Be an evangelist for QA/QE both internally and externally.
- Responsible for continuously improving the QA/QE practice.
- Ensure top talent is attracted into the Practice

**Day to day management of the QA/QE practice**:

- Provide leadership of the QA/QE practice, including team development and performance reviews.
- Responsible for building a strong team of QA/QE experts, ensuring they have the appropriate training and skills to deliver projects.
- Use project planning tools and participate in the identification of and planning for future resource needs, including the hiring of the resources.
- Design, lead and implement the development of test strategies (e.g. balancing manual versus automated testing) and the creation of appropriate test metrics.
- Manage budgets and resources to ensure we can deliver to the changing needs of clients, including cost control, awareness of margins and ensuring return on investments.
- Be the contact person for the QA & QE engineers

**Delivery governance of QA/QE practice**
- Will be responsible for governance of QA and QE projects ensuring there are defined processes for automation practices and that these are adhered to.
- Responsible for the overall selection of tools and techniques implemented within the practice.
- Develop strong relationships with peers to ensure all practice lines are provided in accordance with Expleo best practice processes
- Leverage Expleo global assets, actively promote Global delivery in line with the business strategy

**Technical pre-sales, including proof of concepts.**
- Provide support to the sales team on QA/QE bids/tenders and meetings.
- Conduct test automation proof of values and tooling recommendation.
- Provide demos to a technical and non-technical audience.
- Provides QA/QE solutions and estimates for projects.
- Confidently present solutions and demos to clients, both virtually and in-person.
- Has a good grasp on the wider dependencies to make QA/QE effective.

**Consulting on test automation**.**
- Consults with key business stakeholders to ensure quality activities design is optimised for speed, reliability and maintainability
- Prepares detailed plans on the implementation of projects.
- Provide solutions to improve the quality and speed of system and software delivery.
- Collaborate with Expleo’s global network of QA and QE experts.

**Key selection criteria for leading our QA/QE team**
- Expertise in Software Quality Assurance
- Expertise of test automation and other technical QE skills
- Proven background of delivering successful test automation projects
- Experience (2 to 5+ years) as a team lead
- Experience or familiarity with IT development methodologies (e.g. Agile/Scrum, waterfall)
- Experience in defining and rolling out a QA Strategy in a software product development context
- Ability to take ownership of the practice and to work autonomously
- Flexible and able to cope with an ever-changing, dynamic and exciting environment
- Ability to work under pressure and to meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment
- Open-minded, team player
- Strong analytical problem solving-skills, attention to detail and the ability to think out of the box
- Customer centric with a proactive attitude
- Excellent knowledge of English, both spoken and written

**What’s in it for you**
- Collaborative working environment - we stand shoulder to shoulder with our clients and our peers through good times and challenges
- Expleo Academy - enables you to acquire and develop the right skills by de