Head of Quality Engineering to lead and scale our QA function in India (Relocation to Noida required) 

 This is a pivotal leadership role within our Engineering and Technology team, requiring a unique blend of strategic foresight, commercial awareness, and hands-on technical expertise. 

The ideal candidate is not just a manager but a leader and coach—someone who can recruit and build a high-performing team from the ground up while maintaining involvement in projects and automation. You will be the driving force behind our continued AI Transformation in QA in the region and, ensure our technical capabilities are always one step ahead of business demand. 

This role offers relocation to Noida, its important that you are happy to relocate to Noida and our team will support your relocation 

What you’ll be doing: 

Leadership, Team Development & Future-Readiness 

• Build & Scale: Recruit top-tier QA talent to build the India team. Manage high-volume, high-pressure hiring cycles and  a establish QA Automation hub. 

• Future-Proofing the Workforce: Collaborate closely with Sales and Business Development teams to understand the sales pipeline and emerging market trends. Translate these insights into training roadmaps to ensure the team is "project-ready" for next-generation work before it arrives. 

• Talent Development: Follow and contribury to global engineering career progression frameworks. Foster a culture of continuous learning by coordinating training programs, onboarding graduates, and personally coaching team members. 

• Global Collaboration: Act as the primary liaison for the India region within our global community of QA leaders, ensuring alignment with global standards while addressing local operational needs. 

• Employee Wellbeing: Balance the drive for high performance with a deep commitment to team wellbeing, proactively managing signs of burnout and ensuring a healthy, sustainable work-life balance for your staff. 

 
AI Transformation & Technical Excellence 

• AI Leadership: Champion the adoption of AI-assisted testing tools and generative AI within the QA workflow. Lead transformation activities to automate test generation, self-healing scripts, and predictive quality analytics. 

• Automation Strategy: Lead the design and development of robust, scalable test automation frameworks using modern tools, with a specific focus on Playwright. 

• Hands-on Engineering: Review complex test scenarios and contribute to automation code or framework architecture. You will be expected to guide the team on technical implementation in Java, Python, or JavaScript. 

• Shift-Left & CI/CD: Support project teams in integrating quality gates within deployment pipelines and drive the adoption of "Shift-Left" testing principles. 

 
Strategic Quality Management 

• Metrics & KPIs: Define and track quality metrics (DRE, Test Coverage, Cycle Time) to provide transparent reporting to executive stakeholders. 

• SDLC Integration: Collaborate closely with Engineering, Product, and DevOps leads to embed quality as a mindset throughout the development lifecycle. 

• Infrastructure & Data: Oversee test environment management, data management strategies, and ensure the infrastructure supports rigorous performance and security testing. 

• Client Delivery Assurance: Act as the senior escalation point for critical project quality issues. Build relationships with global account leads to ensure Indian based delivery teams are meeting client expectations and strictly adhering to any SLAs 

 
Process & Operations 

• Agile Efficiency: Optimize testing processes to support rapid Agile/Scrum development cycles, reducing time-to-market whilst improving quality. 

• Prioritization: Expertly handle multiple conflicting priorities and context switching between strategic planning, crisis management, and recruitment activities. 

What we want from you: 

• Extensive QA Leadership & Team Scaling: Proven extensive experience in Quality Assurance, leading and managing teams, with a track record of building and scaling QA teams from small to medium sizes (including graduate intake and senior hires). 

• Comprehensive Technical QA Expertise: Strong hands-on proficiency in test automation frameworks (Java, Python, JavaScript), deep understanding of Functional, API, Performance (JMeter, k6), and Security testing fundamentals. 

• Modern QA Tooling & CI/CD Mastery: Experience with Playwright is highly desirable, along with proficiency in modern CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI). 

• E-commerce/Retail Domain Expertise: Understanding of complex buying journeys within E-commerce/Retail domains, with experience using platforms like Shopify, Adobe Commerce, SFCC, or CommerceTools. 

• Strategic Business & Commercial Acumen: Ability to analyse business trends, sales pipelines, and commercial impact to forecast skill requirements, drive proactive team upskilling, and strategically prepare teams for future sales initiatives. 

• AI Transformation & Empowerment: Proven experience with AI transformation activities and a passion for empowering teams to effectively utilize AI tools in daily workflows. 

• Adaptable, Resilient & Results-Oriented: Comfortable with frequent context switching, adept at managing ambiguity in a fast-paced environment, and capable of handling demanding hiring targets and delivery deadlines. 

• Exceptional Communication & Stakeholder Management: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of clearly explaining complex technical quality risks to non-technical stakeholders. 

• High Emotional Intelligence & Relationship Building: Possesses high emotional intelligence, fostering deep trust and strong relationships across cultural boundaries as an approachable, empathetic listener. 
• Vibrant Team & Tech Community Builder: Actively fosters a vibrant internal engineering culture (organizing Hackathons, Guilds, Lunch & Learns) and a strong sense of community within a distributed workforce through team bonding and celebrating successes. 

Desirable Attributes: 

• Cloud Native: Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes). 

• Emerging Tech: Demonstrated knowledge of AI/ML testing approaches and implementation of LLMs in testing. 

• Certifications: ISTQB Advanced Level or equivalent quality certifications. 

• Remote Management: Experience managing distributed or remote teams across different time zones. 

What we can offer you:

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish.
We empower your Brains for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges.
And we champion Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

AT VML Enterprise Solutions

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.

Head of Quailify Engineering needed to lead and scale our QA function in India. This is a pivotal leadership role within our Engineering and Technology team, requiring a unique blend of strategic foresight, commercial awareness, and hands-on technical expertise. 

The ideal candidate is not just a manager but a leader and coach—someone who can recruit and build a high-performing team from the ground up while maintaining involvement in projects and automation. You will be the driving force behind our continued AI Transformation in QA in the region and, ensure our technical capabilities are always one step ahead of business demand. 

What you’ll be doing: 

Leadership, Team Development & Future-Readiness 

• Build & Scale: Recruit top-tier QA talent to build the India team. Manage high-volume, high-pressure hiring cycles and  a establish QA Automation hub. 

• Future-Proofing the Workforce: Collaborate closely with Sales and Business Development teams to understand the sales pipeline and emerging market trends. Translate these insights into training roadmaps to ensure the team is "project-ready" for next-generation work before it arrives. 

• Talent Development: Follow and contribury to global engineering career progression frameworks. Foster a culture of continuous learning by coordinating training programs, onboarding graduates, and personally coaching team members. 

• Global Collaboration: Act as the primary liaison for the India region within our global community of QA leaders, ensuring alignment with global standards while addressing local operational needs. 

• Employee Wellbeing: Balance the drive for high performance with a deep commitment to team wellbeing, proactively managing signs of burnout and ensuring a healthy, sustainable work-life balance for your staff. 

 
AI Transformation & Technical Excellence 

• AI Leadership: Champion the adoption of AI-assisted testing tools and generative AI within the QA workflow. Lead transformation activities to automate test generation, self-healing scripts, and predictive quality analytics. 

• Automation Strategy: Lead the design and development of robust, scalable test automation frameworks using modern tools, with a specific focus on Playwright. 

• Hands-on Engineering: Review complex test scenarios and contribute to automation code or framework architecture. You will be expected to guide the team on technical implementation in Java, Python, or JavaScript. 

• Shift-Left & CI/CD: Support project teams in integrating quality gates within deployment pipelines and drive the adoption of "Shift-Left" testing principles. 

 
Strategic Quality Management 

• Metrics & KPIs: Define and track quality metrics (DRE, Test Coverage, Cycle Time) to provide transparent reporting to executive stakeholders. 

• SDLC Integration: Collaborate closely with Engineering, Product, and DevOps leads to embed quality as a mindset throughout the development lifecycle. 

• Infrastructure & Data: Oversee test environment management, data management strategies, and ensure the infrastructure supports rigorous performance and security testing. 

• Client Delivery Assurance: Act as the senior escalation point for critical project quality issues. Build relationships with global account leads to ensure Indian based delivery teams are meeting client expectations and strictly adhering to any SLAs 

 
Process & Operations 

• Agile Efficiency: Optimize testing processes to support rapid Agile/Scrum development cycles, reducing time-to-market whilst improving quality. 

• Prioritization: Expertly handle multiple conflicting priorities and context switching between strategic planning, crisis management, and recruitment activities. 

What we want from you: 

• Extensive QA Leadership & Team Scaling: Proven extensive experience in Quality Assurance, leading and managing teams, with a track record of building and scaling QA teams from small to medium sizes (including graduate intake and senior hires). 

• Comprehensive Technical QA Expertise: Strong hands-on proficiency in test automation frameworks (Java, Python, JavaScript), deep understanding of Functional, API, Performance (JMeter, k6), and Security testing fundamentals. 

• Modern QA Tooling & CI/CD Mastery: Experience with Playwright is highly desirable, along with proficiency in modern CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI). 

• E-commerce/Retail Domain Expertise: Understanding of complex buying journeys within E-commerce/Retail domains, with experience using platforms like Shopify, Adobe Commerce, SFCC, or CommerceTools. 

• Strategic Business & Commercial Acumen: Ability to analyse business trends, sales pipelines, and commercial impact to forecast skill requirements, drive proactive team upskilling, and strategically prepare teams for future sales initiatives. 

• AI Transformation & Empowerment: Proven experience with AI transformation activities and a passion for empowering teams to effectively utilize AI tools in daily workflows. 

• Adaptable, Resilient & Results-Oriented: Comfortable with frequent context switching, adept at managing ambiguity in a fast-paced environment, and capable of handling demanding hiring targets and delivery deadlines. 

• Exceptional Communication & Stakeholder Management: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of clearly explaining complex technical quality risks to non-technical stakeholders. 

• High Emotional Intelligence & Relationship Building: Possesses high emotional intelligence, fostering deep trust and strong relationships across cultural boundaries as an approachable, empathetic listener. 
• Vibrant Team & Tech Community Builder: Actively fosters a vibrant internal engineering culture (organizing Hackathons, Guilds, Lunch & Learns) and a strong sense of community within a distributed workforce through team bonding and celebrating successes. 

Desirable Attributes: 

• Cloud Native: Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes). 

• Emerging Tech: Demonstrated knowledge of AI/ML testing approaches and implementation of LLMs in testing. 

• Certifications: ISTQB Advanced Level or equivalent quality certifications. 

• Remote Management: Experience managing distributed or remote teams across different time zones. 

What we can offer you:

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish.
We empower your Brains for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges.
And we champion Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

AT VML Enterprise Solutions

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.

We are VML Enterprise Solutions - a group of talented engineers, tech experts, and creators who combine our passions and contribute to the IT world. You may know us better as Wunderman Thompson Technology – in 2024 we changed our name, but at the same time, we remained a great team of people who deliver our best. We design, build, manage and run complex technology platforms and help our clients to benefit from our work and creativity.   

The opportunity:

An experienced Release Manager, who leads teams to follow best practices in development standards and coding reviews. You have an enthusiasm for learning new skills and initiative to deliver the best outcomes for our clients.

You will be primarily responsible the management and protection of releases through, where appropriate, Build/Develop, QA, UAT, Pre-Prod and Production environments across multiple technical stacks including front ends, middleware, core commerce platforms and more.

What you’ll get to do:

• Negotiate, plan, and manage all release activities.
• Analyse risks and resolve issues that affect release scope, schedule, and quality.
• Work cohesively with external partners, suppliers, product owners, and system integrators (SI’s)
• Develop common strategies for release governance across multiple systems
• Communicate release details and schedules to the Business as required.
• Act as guardian to uphold the integrity of the branching strategy and ensure processes are optimised to enable frequent and smooth releases
• Know and understand impacts of branches and code merges in the repositories used by the dev teams.
• Work with third party managed-hosting providers to increase automated processes end-to-end
• Work with the development teams.
• Coach and help automate release processes.
• Inform senior management of enterprise-wide exposure to release risk and effectively mitigate it
• Create, track, and maintain a published release and deployment calendar.
• Know the tech stack of the development process so you can participate and discuss with the development teams the challenges of the full delivery workflow.
• Maintain release documentation and manage key information such as build and release procedures, dependencies, and notification lists.
• Work with respective teams for sign off including manual, automation, performance and security testing to name a few
• Work with Infrastructure teams to improve a process, pass awareness of potential problems risks and oversee that the process is fit for the Release process needs.
• Work closely with Project Management to ensure the efficiency of the delivery of Programmes and Projects (Control, Plan, Measure, Predict and React).
• Work with Service Management in the Post-Mortem analysis and improvements identification.
• Understand Infrastructure where applications will be deployed and the different technologies that can be involved in a complex e-commerce environment. This way you should build bridges between the product delivered and Infrastructure that supports it

What you should have:

• Experience in DevOps related release management including implementing and managing the release management lifecycle
• Knowledge of software development, preferably on web (e-commerce) sites.
• Knowledge in software build, repository, and maintenance tools like GitHub, Gitlab, Jenkins, Bitbucket or any other automation build and deployment tools.
• Experience working in agile environments with SCRUM methodologies.
• Passionate about delivering quality software and defending the customer/end-user perspective.
• Good communication skills and teamwork believer.
• Strong time management & organisational skills.
• Interested in automating things.
• You like to learn and investigate new technologies that the company is working with or will work in the future.
• Experience in Continuous Integration, Delivery, Deploy methodologies.
• Excellent negotiation skills and an ability to handle sensitive issues with tact and diplomacy.

You will collaborate with our UK project team, so we’ll need you to be available until 18:00 PL

What we can offer you:

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with Heart, fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish.
We empower your Brains for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges.
And we champion Courage, inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

At VML Enterprise Solutions

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team. 

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