What are the responsibilities and job description for the QA Manual Test Lead with Automation position at Nexwave?
Position: QA Manual Test Lead with Automation
Location: Chicago, IL (Need Locals / Onsite from Day 1)
Contract
Mandatory Skillset
Rich experience in Offshore-Onshore team coordination, team management, test planning & strategy.
Hands-on Lead experience mandatory.
Roles & Responsibilities (70% Manual | 30% Automation)
Manual Testing Focus (70%)
Lead end-to-end manual testing efforts including functional, integration, system, regression, and UAT support.
Define comprehensive test strategies, test plans, and test cases aligned with business requirements and Agile ceremonies (sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives).
Coordinate offshore-onshore handshake model – manage daily sync-ups, work allocation, defect triage, and status reporting with distributed teams.
Perform exploratory testing, accessibility testing, and access management validation (user roles, permissions, SSO, MFA).
Drive defect management lifecycle – logging, tracking, retesting, and closure using tools like JIRA/Azure DevOps.
Act as primary point of contact for onsite developers, product owners, and clients – conduct requirement grooming, demo sessions, and stakeholder reviews.
Ensure traceability matrix coverage and sign-off on release readiness from a quality standpoint.
Mentor junior testers and enforce best practices in manual testing processes.
Automation Testing Focus (30%)
Design and maintain lightweight API automation framework using Rest Assured and ReadyAPI for critical backend services.
Develop and execute reusable automated API test suites (contract testing, negative scenarios, data-driven tests).
Integrate API automation into CI/CD pipeline (Jenkins/GitLab) with proper reporting (Extent Reports/Allure).
Perform smoke and sanity automation post-deployment using Selenium (for UI regression where applicable).
Write clean, maintainable scripts in Java/JavaScript/Python with strong understanding of OOPs and scripting best practices.
Review and optimize existing automation scripts for stability and performance.
