Senior Program Test Lead

JOB TITLE: SENIOR PROGRAM TEST LEAD

LOCATION:
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM DURATION: ASAP
- 31 /12/2026 LANGUAGES: DUTCH OR FRENCH AND ENGLISH WORK REGIME: 100% (FULL-TIME AND HYBRID 2(OR)3 DAYS ONSITE)

JOB DESCRIPTION
Positioning and articulation with the Quality Assurance Manager Quality Assurance Manager
- Responsible for the quality strategy, Quality Framework, quality gates, governance and independent evaluation of the quality of the program. Senior Program Test Lead
- Responsible for the operational implementation of this strategy, the management of campaigns and the daily and cross-functional coordination of all testing activities.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Program Test Orchestration and Planning
- Develop, with the Quality Assurance Manager, the overall test plan of the program and translate it into integrated operational plans.
- Orchestrate the testing activities performed by the various workstreams, internal teams, and vendors.
- Establish and maintain a consolidated schedule of test campaigns, dependencies, environments, datasets, and resources.
- Coordinate the sequences of System Testing, SIT, End-to-End Testing, UAT, Regression, and Non-Functional Testing.
- Anticipate capacity conflicts, critical dependencies and cross-domain impacts, and propose the necessary trade-offs. Risk-based management and end-to-end coverage
- Putting Risk-Based Testing at the center of test planning, prioritization, and intensity.
- Assess business, operational, technical, and regulatory risks to define testing priorities.
- Ensure traceability between requirements, risks, scenarios, outcomes, defects, and evidence.
- Maintain an end-to-end view of quality across all Apollo domains, including interfaces and cross-functional journeys.
- Identify areas with insufficient coverage and recommend compensatory measures or additional testing. Methodological coordination and consolidation
- Ensure a consistent methodological approach, common criteria, and consistent reporting across all workstreams.
- Consolidate plans, progress, results, anomalies, risks, and test evidence produced by the various stakeholders.
- Define and monitor the operational indicators necessary for a consolidated quality reading.
- Ensure that environments, data, and prerequisites are available and tailored to each campaign's objectives. Supplier Coordination and Performance Evaluation
- Lead the coordination of testing activities with Pollard, Brightstar and other partners.
- Challenge the plans, results, defects, indicators and conclusions presented by suppliers.
- Analyze the quality and sufficiency of the evidence provided.
- Evaluate, based on the available evidence, the level of quality demonstrated by the tests, document deviations and residual risks, and report to the Quality Assurance Manager. Management of anomalies, risks and trade-offs
- Drive the operational process for defect management and organize multi-team triage sessions.
- Ensure consistent classification of anomaly severity, priority, and impact.
- Lead the arbitrage of remediation and retest priorities, make risk-based recommendations, and escalate decisions beyond his/her mandate.
- Escalate critical risks, bottlenecks, and quality deviations to the Quality Assurance Manager and relevant authorities. Migrations, dry runs et cut-over
- Plan and coordinate the validation of data and system migrations.
- Define and supervise tests related to dry runs, operational rehearsals and cut-over scenarios.
- Verify coverage of entry and exit criteria, data reconciliation, recovery mechanisms, and expected evidence.
- Consolidate dry run results and assess residual risks prior to cut-over. Release readiness and support for Go/No-Go decisions
- Assess release readiness based on consolidated indicators, coverage achieved, open defects, residual risks and quality of evidence.
- Prepare a factual summary of the end-to-end quality and the conditions necessary for production.
- Formulate, with the Quality Assurance Manager, Go/No-Go recommendations for governance bodies.
- Ensure the follow-up of the conditions, derogations and actions decided in the context of the release. Reporting and communication
- Produce consolidated, regular and decision-oriented reporting on progress, coverage, results, defaults and risks.
- Present the status of quality and release readiness to the Program Board, in collaboration with the Quality Assurance Manager.
- Make visible the discrepancies between the expected level of quality and the level demonstrated by the tests. Desired profile Experience and expertise
- Proven experience in a Program Test Lead or Senior Test Lead role within complex, multi-domain, multi-vendor transformation programs.
- Strong proficiency in testing methodologies, including ISTQB, Risk-Based Testing or equivalent.
- In-depth experience with end-to-end testing, integrated environments, migrations, dry runs, and cut-over readiness.
- Good understanding of processes related to distribution, gaming, digital, payments and operations.
- Proficient in test and defect management tools, including Jira and Xray, as well as consolidated reporting practices. Leadership and influence
- Ability to orchestrate multiple teams and vendors without a direct reporting relationship.
- Ability to constructively challenge the results and evidence provided by stakeholders.
- Excellent communication, synthesis, negotiation and arbitration skills.
- Strong focus on results, risk and fact-based decision-making.
- Ability to maintain a global vision while mastering the operational challenges of test campaigns. KEY DELIVERABLES
- Overall program test plan and consolidated operational plans.
- Integrated planning of campaigns, dependencies, environments, data, and resources.
- Prioritization model and catalog of End-to-End scenarios based on Risk-Based Testing.
- Consolidated dashboards of coverage, results, defects, risks and quality of evidence.
- Traceability repository between requirements, risks, scenarios, results and anomalies.
- Consolidated evidence records and reviews of supplier results.
- Migration validation plans and reports, dry runs, and cut-over criteria.
- Release readiness assessments and Go/No-Go recommendations.
- Consolidated register of defects, risks, decisions, deviations and actions. SKILLS
- ISTQB:
- JIRA:
- Test management:
- Xray: