Director, QA Engineering

Who We Are

Solera is a global leader in data and software services that strives to transform every touchpoint of the vehicle lifecycle into a connected digital experience. In addition, we provide products and services to protect life’s other most important assets: our homes and digital identities. Today, Solera processes over 300 million digital transactions annually for approximately 235,000 partners and customers in more than 90 countries. Our 6,500 team members foster an uncommon, innovative culture and are dedicated to successfully bringing the future to bear today through cognitive answers, insights, algorithms and automation.  For more information, please visit solera.com.

The Role
We are looking for a seasoned Director of QA Engineering to join our Engineering team. With your focus on DevOps, continuous testing, and Shift-Left experience, you’ll be leading a team of talented QA engineers in the design, development, and delivery of automation test frameworks for our software platforms. You will guide the team and leverage existing test automation infrastructure to build reusable automation artifacts suitable for iterative agile product delivery. You will lead with a DevOps mentality and your focus will include key areas such as streamlined test automation, test data management, and CI/CD Integration for continuous testing as quality gates. You will be asked to provide recommendations into product architecture to ensure high quality and make recommendations on reliability, security, and performance of the product.

This position will report to the global VP of Quality Engineering and work across the Engineering and Product teams to establish a software quality assurance system that promotes customer satisfaction and positively impact Solera’s financial performance.

The Team
This position is primarily for the Mexico region and governs a major branch in a globally centralized QA organization. You’ll be managing a team of 100+ engineers spread geographically throughout Latin and South America with a heavy concentration in Mexico City. You’ll also be collaborating with global QA peers covering other geographies and Centers of Excellence in North America, Europe, and India. You’ll be overseeing dozens of products that cover single and multiple geographies and working with multiple stakeholders for these products spanning Engineering, Product Management, Customer Support, DevOps, and others.

What You’ll Do

• Responsible for defining QA strategy, approach, and execution in development projects
• Design the organization and build a reporting structure that favors high quality, results, and efficiency.
• Design, implement, and document procedures for process control, process improvement, testing and CI/CD.
• Establish and implement metrics to monitor system effectiveness and enable making sound product quality decisions.
• Gather and present testing metrics and testing activities to Senior Leadership
• Oversee and direct the development of new test frameworks and applications to ensure the implementation of manual and automated test solutions in alignment with overall organizational goals
• Think strategically to help drive features and services for short and long-term growth
• Provide team oversight during the full software development life cycle, from conception, design, implementation, and testing to documentation, delivery, and maintenance
• Bring a can-do attitude, high energy, and effectiveness at managing relationships (up, down, across)
• Serve as a SQA lead and work with the leads of other disciplines to increase the SQA impact on the end product
• Mitigate risk and escalate to technology leadership as appropriate
• Develop and increase team performance and collaboration across the organization
• Create a fun, fast paced, motivating, and rewarding environment for their teams and the organization
• Attract, build, and retain a highly engaged and capable quality assurance teams that can deliver on our technology and business strategies

What You’ll Bring

• BS/MS in Computer Science/Computer Engineering or related technical degree; or equivalent amount of professional development
• Have an intense passion for technology and solutions design
• Have 1+ years of experience as a Director of quality assurance in an agile environment including working with enterprise customers on large scale project or have 5+ years professional experience as a Senior Manager of quality assurance in an agile environment managing a large multi-national team
• Have proven track record in leading the architecture, design, development and operations of enterprise scale testing frameworks, processes, methodologies for diverse environments, solutions, and products
• Proficiency in QA methodologies, software testing principles, concepts, verification/ validation techniques, and test management
• Experience with AI/ML-driven testing platforms and predictive analytics.
• Familiarity with microservices architecture, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and service virtualization.
• Excellent analytical, research, documentation, project planning and implementation skills
• Impeccable skills to communicate effectively cross-functionally across various teams, organizations, and internal and external stakeholders to drive engineering effort
• Are self-motivated and excellent problems-solvers
• Ability to adapt and willingness to learn new technologies and techniques
• Effectively lead and manage change within their area of responsibility as well as across the business
• Experience with automation tools such as Selenium, Appium, and TestNG
• Experience with API level testing
• Experience with performance and load testing
• Experience using various bug tracking tools such as Rally, and test management tools such as qTest
• Experience working in a CI/CD environment preferably with a modern build release tool such as Jenkins
• An unwavering passion for managing the dynamics of a fast-paced environment
• Experience with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Experience with Test Driven Development
• Hunger to learn new concepts, new technologies, and be exposed to/adopt new ideas
• Are driven to improve, personally and professionally
• Mentor and inspire others to raise the bar for everyone around them
• Love to collaborate with their peers, designing pragmatic solutions
• Have a cooperative, collaborative, open and flexible mindset

Personal and Professional Attributes

• Empathy – Understands the team and stakeholders and their motivations. Works actively to make everyone they interact with successful.
• Pragmatic – Knows when to trade off short and long-term gains and can help guide stakeholders through these decisions while coaching them on the implications.
• Learning Oriented – Strives to learn more about the people he or she is working with, about the business, the business environment, technology and its application and the process being followed.
• Technical Debt Savvy – Becomes a driving force for addressing technical debt by guiding and coaching delivery teams on both avoiding new debt and removing old debt. Works with business leaders to understand the implications of technical debt and helps guide them in supporting the delivery teams to address it.
• Customer focus (internally/externally) – Capacity to anticipate customers’ needs and place customers at the center of own thinking and actions.
• Coaching skills – Knows how to provide constructive feedback, guidance and support.
• Continuous Improvement – Use of a systematic approach for evaluating current processes and identifying options to streamline them.
• Strategic Thinking & Vision – Able to see the bigger picture and have a long-term vision.
• Team Building – Understands the principles to unite a group into an effective team.
• Problem Solving – Troubleshoots quickly, but also know the right times to ask for help.

It is impossible to list every requirement for, or responsibility of, any position.  Similarly, we cannot identify all the skills a position may require since job responsibilities and the Company’s needs may change over time.  Therefore, the above job description is not comprehensive or exhaustive.   The Company reserves the right to adjust, add to or eliminate any aspect of the above description.  The Company also retains the right to require all employees to undertake additional or different job responsibilities when necessary to meet business needs.