QE Practice Lead

Overview :

The QE Practice Head is responsible for building, scaling, and leading the Quality Engineering practice across the organization. This role owns QE strategy, offerings, delivery excellence, innovation, and P&L, while partnering with business, sales, and delivery leaders to drive revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and engineering maturity.

The role moves QE from traditional testing to quality-first, automation-led, AI-driven engineering.

Key Responsibilities

Practice Strategy & Leadership

• Define and execute the QE practice vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with business goals
  

• Evolve QE from test-centric to quality engineering and continuous testing
  

• Establish global QE standards, frameworks, metrics, and best practices
  

• Build and mentor QE leadership (Practice Managers, Architects, COEs)
  

Offerings & Innovation

• Design QE service offerings across:
  

  • Test Automation (UI, API, Mobile)
    

  • Performance, Security & Reliability Testing
    

  • DevOps & Continuous Testing
    

  • Data, AI/ML, and Model Validation Testing
    

  • Cloud, Microservices, and Platform Testing
    

• Drive adoption of AI-led testing, test intelligence, and shift-left / shift-right strategies
  

• Create accelerators, reusable assets, tools, and IP
  

Delivery Excellence & Governance

• Ensure high-quality delivery across programs with strong SLAs, KPIs, and quality metrics
  

• Establish governance models, risk management, and compliance standards
  

• Lead transformation of large testing engagements into QE-led programs
  

• Own customer escalations related to quality, delivery, and productivity
  

Pre-Sales & Business Growth

• Partner with Sales and Solutions teams for pre-sales, estimations, and proposals
  

• Support deal qualification, solution design, and client presentations
  

• Drive revenue growth, margin improvement, and pipeline creation for QE services
  

• Contribute to account mining and expansion strategies
  

Talent & Capability Building

• Build a strong QE talent ecosystem (hiring, reskilling, certifications)
  

• Define career paths, competency models, and learning frameworks
  

• Promote a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and automation-first mindset
  

Financial & Practice Management

• Own QE practice P&L, utilization, margins, and forecasting
  

• Optimize cost structures through automation, offshore leverage, and productivity gains
  

• Track practice KPIs and executive-level reporting
  

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 19+ years in Quality Engineering / Software Testing
  

• 5+ years in a leadership role managing large QE practices or COEs
  

• Experience running QE for large-scale enterprise or BFSI / Insurance / Telecom / Retail programs
  

• Proven track record in scaling practices, driving revenue, and transformations
  

Technical & Domain Expertise

• Strong expertise in:
  

  • Automation frameworks (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, Appium, REST Assured, etc.)
    

  • CI/CD & DevOps (Jenkins, GitHub, Azure DevOps, GitLab)
    

  • Cloud-native testing (AWS, Azure, GCP)
    

  • Performance & Security testing tools
    

• Solid understanding of Agile, SAFe, DevSecOps, and SRE concepts
  

• Exposure to AI/ML testing, data validation, and test analytics is a strong plus
  

Leadership & Business Skills

• Strong executive presence and stakeholder management
  

• Ability to influence CXOs, clients, and internal leadership
  

• Strategic thinker with hands-on execution mindset
  

• Excellent communication, problem-solving, and decision-making skills
  

Key Success Metrics

• QE revenue growth & margin improvement
  

• Automation coverage and reduction in defect leakage
  

• Client satisfaction (CSAT / NPS)
  

• Practice utilization and talent readiness
  

• Innovation adoption and IP creation