QA Lead, Senior

Introduction

Maryland Benefits (MD Benefits) is a dynamic, cloud-based platform. This enterprise-wide digital service allows organizations to build, test, host, operate, and integrate mission-driven applications, data, and emerging technologies. MD Benefits offers cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities, a shared data architecture, and product development services, all developed by the State of Maryland to help multiple agencies deliver and manage health, human, and social service benefits and programs. On July 1, 2025, the operation of the MD Benefits shared platform and statewide applications transitioned from the Department of Human Services (DHS) to the Department of Information Technology (DoIT).

***This is a contractual position with limited benefits***

Main Purpose

The Senior QA Lead provides strategic quality management and governance for information systems, utilizing advanced methodologies, techniques, and metrics to ensure product excellence.

Position Duties

The responsibilities of a QA Lead (Senior) include, but are not limited to the following duties:

• Establishing and governing capable processes, monitoring critical process controls, implementing systemic root cause analysis, and driving continuous process improvement across the organization.
• Developing and executing strategic quality plans in targeted organizational areas to align with long-term business goals.
• Architecting QA strategies to ensure continuous production consistent with industry standards, government regulations, and evolving customer requirements.
• Designing, implementing, and educating teams on lifecycle methodologies and high-impact QA performance metrics.
• Leading the development and documentation of master test plans, strategies, and procedures within complex Agile environments.
• Overseeing the design and execution of IT software tests and auditing results to ensure strict compliance with applicable regulations.
• Directing the strategy for test data management and performing high-level reviews of test results to evaluate conformance to architectural design.
• Defining and maintaining the roadmap for automated regression and integration test frameworks for scalable validation.
• Acting as the primary liaison to communicate technical test results, risks, and quality feedback to development teams and stakeholders.
• Providing technical oversight for database queries used to identify and validate complex test data sets.
• Governing database testing strategies using advanced SQL queries.
• Orchestrating data set-up for test automation and validating complex system-to-system result integrations.
• Analyzing and auditing data flow and integrity across multiple integrated systems.
• Managing the defect lifecycle, including reporting, tracking, and leading defect triage sessions with Developers for rapid resolution.
• Analyzing software defect trends to serve as a strategic input for comprehensive retesting and risk mitigation plans.

Minimum Qualifications

Education:

This position requires a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related discipline. Will accept 7 years of experience in lieu of education.

General Experience:

The proposed candidate must have at least eight (8) years of information systems quality assurance experience in Integrated Eligibility Systems with at least three (3) years in a leadership or supervisory capacity.

Specialized Experience:

• 5 years of experience working with statistical methods, quality standards, and process governance.
• 6 years of experience as a lead analyst/tester supporting requirement analysis, application test script architecture, and execution oversight.
• 4 years of experience in mapping complex business and technical requirements into high-level test strategies.
• 4 years of advanced practical experience in using relational databases and generating complex SQL scripts.
• Mandatory deep practical experience with Integrated Eligibility Systems.
• Extensive functional proficiency in supporting Federal and State Health and Human Services (HHS) initiatives, specifically governing programs such as SNAP, TANF, EBT, Medicaid, LTC, and CHIP.
• Superior communication skills with a proven ability to bridge the gap between technical teams and non-technical business users.
• Expert ability to lead the triage of change requests and incidents during all phases of design, development, testing, and training.
• Mastery of QA Domains: Practical knowledge in governing manual and automated testing, API testing, 508 compliance, performance, UAT, Unit, regression, and integration testing.
• Strategic Automation: Deep experience with automated testing tools and the ability to define automation frameworks for Web and Mobile applications in cross-platform environments