IT Manager of Validation (QA)

**Relocation package offered**

As IT Manager Validation for our client, you will own Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Engineering (QE) across all development teams. You will lead and influence the quality of applications and data concisely and clearly across all business units within the enterprise. This ability includes modern application development, data engineering, business intelligence, Workday Adaptive Planning, Blue Yonder and Microsoft Fabric, and Power Platform. You will define the enterprise validation strategy and operating model, establish standards and tooling, and lead a high-performing team that safeguards reliability, trust in data, compliance, and great user experiences—while enabling fast, predictable delivery with a track record of raising quality while improving speed.

Responsibilities:

• Establish a comprehensive QA/QE roadmap for applications, data, and analytics, covering unit, API, UI, integration/E2E, data quality, reconciliation, and non-functional testing. Ensure quality gates align with SDLC/ALM and release schedules, and set clear, measurable quality targets for each product area.
• Coach and develop QA engineers and Software test engineers focused on both application and data/BI testing; build a culture of prevention, automation, and continuous improvement; provide clear goals, feedback, rewards, and recognition.
• Engineer test strategy & frameworks, standardizing test design and execution for unit/API/UI/E2E, environment usage, and mocking/virtualization; codify reusable libraries and reference suites.
• Establish data quality frameworks for pipelines and integrations, source-to-target reconciliations, and CDC validations; establishing defined tests for lineage and SLAs, handle data drift detection, and validate performance and cost characteristics of batch/streaming jobs.
• Govern testing standards for BI artifacts, set and enforce standards for BI model validation, including semantic checks, DAX, RLS/OLS, visuals, bookmarks, and query performance. Ensure enterprise models pass certification and follow Dev/Test/Prod deployment pipelines.
• Adaptive Planning validation align change control and testing with FP&A calendar; validate models and versions, security, master-data and actuals integrations, and reconciliations ahead of forecast/close windows.
• Power Platform validation and defined testing patterns for Power Apps/Power Automate/Power Pages, implement guardrails for citizen-developer solutions without slowing innovation.
• Align change control and testing for Blue Yonder with validation models and versions, security, master-data and actuals integrations, and reconciliations.
• Automate quality in CI/CD using integrated automated tests and static analysis into pipelines (apps, data, and BI); set minimum bars for coverage, flakiness control, and pass rates; enable fast feedback with parallelization and intelligent test selection.
• Establish practices for non-functional quality performance, load, resilience, accessibility cross-browser/device, and integrate security testing in partnership with Infosec.
• Own UAT orchestration & release readiness defining UAT scope and success criteria, coordinate business sign-offs, manage defect triage/prioritization, and publish release quality summaries and go/no-go recommendations.
• Monitor and report key performance metrics for applications, data, and BI—including defect leakage, Defect Removal Efficiency, automation coverage, mean time to detect, change failure rate, data SLA attainment, refresh success rate, and data incident recurrence—and lead corrective actions and retrospectives to drive continuous improvement.
• Build trusted relationships with Product, Engineering, FP&A, Data/Analytics, Security, and IT Ops; translate quality risks and trade-offs into clear business language and options.
• Own toolchain and budget management of administered QA tooling manage licenses/SOWs, and scale capability cost-effectively.
• Track evolving test frameworks, Microsoft/Workday roadmaps, and best practices in data/analytics and application testing; pilot and scale innovations that deliver measurable reliability and productivity.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field required
• Master’s degree Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field preferred.
• 8 years’ experience in QA/QE for enterprise software and/or data platforms.
• 4 years’ experience leading QA/QE teams, including matrixed or distributed environments.
• Experience leading and performing design and implementation automated testing strategies across Unit, API, UI, E2E, and Data/BI layers, integrated with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira).
• Experience QA ownership for Data Engineering (ETL/ELT pipelines, Lakehouse/Warehouse testing, source-to-target reconciliation) and Business Intelligence (Power BI models/reports, DAX, RLS/OLS, performance).
• Experience validating Workday Adaptive Planning and Power Platform solutions within governed ALM processes, aligned to financial cycles.
• Proficiency in non-functional testing (performance, accessibility), test data management, defect management, and triage.
• Vendor and Partner management skills, including test services and SOW execution.
• Direct experience test automation tools, data testing frameworks, SQL, orchestration integration, and quality dashboards.