Quality Assurance Lead Engineer

Our partner is looking for a QA Chapter Lead based in Italy. This is a senior technical QA leadership role combining hands-on engineering with responsibility for quality standards across multiple engineering squads. You’ll be embedded directly within one squad while also shaping QA strategy, automation, tooling, and testing practices across the wider engineering function. You’ll influence how quality is built into the development lifecycle, from acceptance criteria and automated testing to Definition of Done standards and CI quality gates. The role offers significant technical ownership without traditional people-management responsibilities. You’ll collaborate with QA engineers, Product Owners, Tech Leads, and engineering leadership in an Agile environment. This is an opportunity to establish scalable QA practices and directly improve the reliability and quality of complex, data-driven financial products. Accountabilities: - Work as an embedded senior QA engineer within one engineering squad, actively participating in sprint planning, daily standups, reviews, retrospectives, and other squad ceremonies. - Define and agree on clear acceptance criteria with Product Owners before work enters each sprint. - Design, write, maintain, and improve automated test suites across appropriate levels, including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing. - Own the squad’s Definition of Done quality gate and ensure agreed quality criteria are consistently met before releases. - Define and maintain QA standards across the engineering function, including test-pyramid principles, automation tooling, naming conventions, coverage thresholds, and CI quality gates. - Establish onboarding processes and baseline QA expectations for engineers joining the chapter. - Lead a monthly QA Guild with the counterpart Chapter Lead to align standards, tooling, frameworks, and Definition of Done practices across engineering. - Own the selection, evaluation, evolution, and documentation of QA automation frameworks and tools. - Identify opportunities to introduce, improve, or retire testing technologies based on engineering needs and effectiveness. - Monitor and report on QA chapter health, including coverage trends, flaky-test rates, automation backlogs, and systemic quality risks. - Partner with engineering leadership to identify and address quality issues that affect multiple teams or the wider platform. - Promote a proactive quality culture in which QA is integrated into development from the beginning rather than treated as a final-stage validation function. Requirements: - 5+ years of professional software QA experience, including at least 2 years in a Lead QA role with responsibility for test strategy across multiple teams. - Strong automation engineering skills and the ability to write maintainable, readable, production-quality test code that runs reliably in CI environments. - Deep experience with API testing, including REST APIs, contract testing, integration testing, and backend-focused test design. - Proven experience defining and maintaining QA standards within Agile product or engineering teams. - Experience working as an embedded QA contributor throughout the development lifecycle rather than operating solely as a final quality gate. - Strong understanding of Java-based backend environments, including the ability to read Java code, understand system architecture, and create effective tests for backend functionality. - Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineering teams and drive consistency across squads without direct line-management authority. - High level of technical ownership, analytical thinking, attention to detail, and commitment to engineering quality.