Director of Quality Assurance

Description

Position at loanDepot

Position Summary:

The Director of Quality Assurance will lead the strategy, execution, and continuous improvement of the Quality Assurance function within the Technology organization. This role is responsible for modernizing quality practices, strengthening release validation, advancing test automation, and ensuring quality is embedded throughout the Software Development Lifecycle.

This is a hands-on leadership role. The successful candidate must be able to operate at both strategic and technical levels, setting direction for QA and Quality Engineering while also reviewing, validating, and contributing to automation strategy, CI/CD quality controls, data validation, and release-readiness practices.

This leader will partner closely with Engineering, DevOps, Architecture, Product, Business, and Operations teams to improve software quality, reduce production risk, and create a culture of shared quality ownership.

Responsibilities:

• Quality Strategy & Leadership
• Plan, direct, and continuously improve QA policies, programs, standards, and initiatives.
• Define and lead the overall quality strategy across applications, services, platforms, and business-critical technology initiatives.
• Lead, mentor, and develop high-performing QA and Quality Engineering teams.
• Foster a culture of quality ownership, accountability, automation, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with Engineering, DevOps, Architecture, Product, Business, and Operations stakeholders to align quality objectives with organizational goals.
• Communicate quality risks, release readiness, and mitigation recommendations clearly to technical and executive stakeholders.
• Perform other duties and projects as assigned.
• SDLC Quality Integration & Governance
• Define and enforce QA standards across the full Software Development Lifecycle, including requirements, design, development, build, release, and production readiness.
• Ensure QA practices are embedded throughout delivery rather than limited to end-of-cycle testing.
• Establish traceability between requirements, test cases, defects, releases, deployment activity, and production outcomes.
• Define risk-based testing strategies that focus quality efforts on areas of highest business, operational, customer, and regulatory impact.
• Provide evidence-based release-readiness recommendations using defined quality criteria, test outcomes, risk indicators, and production-readiness signals.
• Drive consistent quality practices across teams while balancing governance with engineering autonomy.
• Test Automation & Quality Engineering
• Drive an automation-first testing strategy across applications, APIs, services, and platforms.
• Define standards for API, service-level, event-driven, and end-to-end validation, ensuring business workflows are validated beyond the user interface layer.
• Ensure automated tests are integrated into CI/CD pipelines and actively contribute to building, deployment, and release decision-making.
• Establish measurable quality thresholds, coverage expectations, and release criteria.
• Ensure testing frameworks are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with modern engineering practices.
• Evaluate and recommend testing, automation, and quality management tools that improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Data Validation & System Integrity
• Define and enforce strategies for validating data integrity across applications, services, databases, and third-party integrations.
• Ensure QA processes include validation of complex data flows and consistency across systems.
• Establish standards for database testing, API validation, and reconciliation testing.
• Develop and oversee test data management strategies, including test data creation, masking, provisioning, maintenance, and governance.
• Ensure quality practices support regulatory, compliance, audit, and customer data protection requirements.
• Ensure defects are classified based on technical severity, enabling clear separation between technical impact and business prioritization.
• Observability, Reliability & Production Quality
• Partner with Engineering, DevOps, and Platform teams to use logs, metrics, traces, alerts, and telemetry to validate application behavior and improve testing effectiveness.
• Ensure distributed, service-oriented, and integrated architectures are validated as part of standard QA practice.
• Use production telemetry, incident patterns, defect trends, and operational insights to identify quality gaps and improve test coverage.
• Establish practices for resiliency, fault tolerance, recovery, business continuity, and production-readiness testing.
• Support defect investigation, root cause analysis, production validation, and continuous improvement through release and deployment traceability.
• Organizational & Technical Leadership
• Influence engineering teams toward greater ownership of software quality.
• Collaborate with DevOps and Platform Engineering teams to ensure quality controls are consistently enforced through automation.
• Serve as a technical advisor for quality engineering, automation strategy, testing architecture, and release readiness.
• Establish quality metrics, KPIs, reporting, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Maintain awareness of emerging technologies, automation approaches, AI-assisted testing capabilities, and industry best practices.
• Non-Negotiable Technical Expectations (Hands-On)
• Embedding QA practices throughout the SDLC, not only at the end of development.
• Integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Defining quality gates, promotion criteria, and release-readiness standards.
• Using automated test results, defect trends, coverage, and risk indicators to influence release decisions.
• Validating APIs, services, integrations, databases, and complex data flows beyond UI-level testing.
• Using SQL and data validation techniques to confirm system integrity.
• Validating distributed systems using logs, metrics, traces, telemetry, or observability platforms.
• Designing testing approaches for resiliency, recovery, dependency failure, degradation, and production-like scenarios.
• Reviewing automation frameworks, test strategies, API testing approaches, data validation methods, and CI/CD quality controls.
• Leading teams while maintaining enough technical depth to assess and challenge implementation decisions.
• Ability to engage directly with technical implementations when required.

Requirements:

• Minimum ten (10) + years of experience in Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering, Software Testing, or related field.
• Minimum five (5) + years of leadership or management experience.
• Strong understanding of software quality assurance concepts, practices, methodologies, and modern quality engineering principles.
• Experience with SQL, data validation, and at least one programming language (e.g., C#, Java, Python, or similar).
• Experience with modern test automation tools, frameworks, and quality engineering practices.
• Experience in integrating testing and quality controls into CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted tools to improve QA automation, productivity, and quality outcomes.
• Experience in the Mortgage, Financial Services, Lending, or other highly regulated industry preferred.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field required, Master’s Degree preferred.

Why work for #teamloanDepot

• Competitive compensation package based on experience, skillset, and overall fit.
• Inclusive, diverse, and collaborative culture.
• Work alongside passionate, customer-focused professionals.
• Extensive growth and professional development opportunities.
• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits.
• Wellness programs supporting both mental and physical health.
• Generous paid time off.

About loanDepot

loanDepot (NYSE: LDI) is a digital commerce company committed to serving its customers throughout the home ownership journey. Since its launch in 2010, loanDepot has revolutionized the mortgage industry with a digital-first approach that makes it easier, faster, and less stressful to purchase or refinance a home. Today, loanDepot enables customers to achieve the American dream of homeownership through a broad suite of lending and real estate services that simplify one of life's most complex transactions. With headquarters in Southern California and offices nationwide, loanDepot is committed to serving the communities in which its team lives and works through a variety of local, regional, and national philanthropic efforts.

Base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay for this role is between $170,000 to $233,000. Your base pay will depend on multiple individualized factors, including your job-related knowledge/skills, qualifications, experience, and market location.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.