Director of Quality Engineering
Harnham
Remote · USA · Posted September 8, 2026
More in Technology & Software · Engineering jobs
About the job
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Director of Quality Engineering
Location: Fully Remote – U.S. Travel: Occasional travel to Dallas, TX, potentially once per quarter Compensation: $245,000-$270,000 base + 20% annual bonus Benefits: Healthcare + 401(k) Work Authorization: U.S. Citizens and Green Card holders only – no sponsorship
Candidates cannot currently reside in California, New York, Hawaii, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, or Wyoming.
About the Company
A large, mission-driven healthcare organization is investing heavily in modern engineering, automation, AI, and customer-facing digital experiences.
Operating at significant enterprise scale, the organization is accelerating its technology strategy and building modern capabilities across software engineering, data, AI, and digital products.
As engineering velocity increases, leadership is rethinking how quality is built into the software development lifecycle. The organization is now establishing a modern, automation-first Quality Engineering function capable of supporting both traditional software and the next generation of AI-enabled products.
About the Role
The Director of Quality Engineering will lead the transformation of an established, predominantly manual QA environment into a modern, automation-first Quality Engineering organization.
This is a true build opportunity.
Today, an existing QA team supports approximately 25 development teams, but there is no dedicated SDET function. The incoming Director will own the existing QA organization while building the technical capabilities, automation frameworks, SDET talent, standards, tooling, and operating model required for the future.
The immediate priority is establishing scalable deterministic automation across API, UI, integration, regression, performance, accessibility, and end-to-end testing while embedding quality directly into CI/CD and engineering workflows.
Longer term, the organization has an ambitious vision for AI-enabled and agentic testing-moving toward intelligent systems capable of generating tests, identifying defects, selecting regression coverage, and eventually executing increasingly complex testing workflows based on intent.
The successful candidate will be a builder who has transformed Quality Engineering before and is excited by the opportunity to create the strategy rather than inherit one.
Key Responsibilities
Define and execute the enterprise Quality Engineering strategy
Lead the transformation from manual-heavy QA toward an automation-first engineering model
Build a multi-year roadmap across automation, tooling, talent, metrics, and operating model modernization
Establish and scale a dedicated SDET and test automation capability
Lead the existing QA organization through its transition toward a more technical, automation-oriented model
Design scalable automation frameworks across API, UI, integration, regression, performance, accessibility, and end-to-end testing
Embed automated testing into CI/CD pipelines, development workflows, and release gates
Establish shift-left testing practices and reduce reliance on late-stage manual validation
Define enterprise standards for quality gates, release readiness, regression testing, defect triage, and production validation
Establish meaningful metrics around automation coverage, defect leakage, test effectiveness, release predictability, and production stability
Introduce AI-enabled approaches to test generation, maintenance, defect analysis, regression selection, and synthetic data
Partner with Engineering, Product, Architecture, Security, Data, AI, and Operations teams
Establish evaluation and quality practices for AI-enabled and agentic systems
Support validation of AI behavior, guardrails, traceability, safety, errors, fallback behavior, and human-in-the-loop workflows
Build, coach, and develop technical Quality Engineering talent
Must Haves
15+ years of experience across Quality Engineering, software quality, test automation, Software Engineering, or related technology delivery
7+ years of Quality Engineering, SDET, automation, QA, or engineering leadership
Proven experience transforming manual QA environments into automation-first Quality Engineering organizations
Experience building or substantially scaling test automation capabilities
Experience leading technical Quality Engineering, SDET, or engineering-adjacent teams
Deep understanding of modern test automation architecture and frameworks
Strong experience across API, UI, integration, regression, performance, and end-to-end testing
Experience embedding automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and release gates
Strong understanding of shift-left testing and engineering-owned quality
Experience defining quality gates, release-readiness standards, automation metrics, and testing strategy
Strong understanding of modern software engineering, Agile, CI/CD, and DevSecOps
Experience leading significant technical and organizational transformation
Ability to influence Engineering, Product, Architecture, Security, Operations, and executive stakeholders
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or another related technical discipline
AI & Next-Generation Quality Engineering
The strongest candidates will bring a point of view on where Quality Engineering is heading-not simply how testing has traditionally been done.
Experience or strong technical exposure in areas such as the following will stand out:
AI-assisted test generation and maintenance
Intelligent regression selection
AI-assisted defect analysis
Synthetic test data
AI evaluation frameworks
GenAI and conversational-system testing
Expected-behavior and guardrail validation
Hallucination and error detection
Human-in-the-loop validation
Agentic or intent-based testing
Automated monitoring and feedback loops for AI systems
The longer-term objective is not simply to automate manual test cases. It is to create a Quality Engineering capability capable of supporting increasingly intelligent and autonomous software systems.
Nice to Have
Playwright, Maestro, or comparable modern automation frameworks
Experience building an SDET organization from the ground up
Experience transforming an established manual QA workforce
AI, GenAI, machine learning, or agentic-system testing experience
Experience with customer-facing or mission-critical digital products
Healthcare or health technology experience
Financial services, life sciences, or another regulated/high-trust industry
Experience managing vendor, partner, or distributed QA resources
Master’s degree in a relevant technical discipline
Healthcare experience is valuable but is not the primary requirement for this search. Deep automation expertise and experience building technical Quality Engineering capabilities are significantly more important.
Why Join
Build an enterprise Quality Engineering capability from a near-blank slate
Define the automation strategy, frameworks, tooling, standards, and operating model
Establish a dedicated SDET capability
Transform an established manual QA environment rather than simply optimize an already mature automation program
Own both the technical strategy and organizational evolution
Build automation directly into modern engineering and CI/CD workflows
Help define how Quality Engineering evolves for GenAI and agentic systems
Work toward an ambitious longer-term vision for intent-based and agentic testing
Partner directly with senior Engineering, Product, Architecture, Data, and AI leaders
Work on customer-facing technology where quality and reliability have meaningful real-world impact
Fully remote with limited travel to Dallas, TX
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