Director of Quality Assurance & Automation

Job Summary

Pantomath is seeking a Director of Quality Assurance & Automation to define, lead, and scale our quality strategy across products and platforms. This role is designed for a hands-on, strategic leader who thrives in a high-growth startup environment —someone who can balance technical credibility with organizational leadership and influence.

The Director will guide QA engineers, co-ops, and nearshore partners, ensuring our testing and automation practices align with engineering velocity, product innovation, and customer trust. This person will act as both people leader and execution partner , serving as the conduit between senior QA engineers and executive leadership.

This is a player-coach role: roughly 70% strategic and people leadership, and 30% hands-on testing, validation, and process design.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership, Strategy, and Culture

• Define and own Pantomath’s comprehensive QA and automation roadmap , aligning it with product and engineering goals.

• Lead a distributed team of QA professionals—including senior automation engineers, QA co-ops, and nearshore testers—while building future organizational capacity through hiring and mentorship.

• Translate company and engineering strategy into actionable QA milestones, ensuring alignment, transparency, and consistent progress.

• Serve as the voice of QA in leadership discussions, representing team insights and surfacing concerns from the ground level.

• Establish measurable goals and KPIs for automation coverage, regression success rates, test cycle times, and release readiness.

• Champion a “shift-left” quality culture , where quality is owned by everyone—from requirements to deployment.

Program Management and Execution

• Act as project manager and facilitator for the QA roadmap—conducting weekly deep-dives with senior QA engineers to review progress, unblock issues, and ensure milestone delivery.

• Partner cross-functionally with Product Management, Engineering, and DevOps to embed quality into every phase of the SDLC.

• Streamline QA processes to balance speed and rigor; reduce release risk while increasing test velocity and feedback loop efficiency.

• Lead post-incident reviews, using data to drive preventative measures and continuous improvement.

• Report on quality metrics, testing progress, and risks to executive stakeholders with clarity and confidence.

Hands-On Technical Leadership

• Stay technically fluent and credible : understand, review, and contribute to automation, testing frameworks, and validation pipelines.

• Validate testing outcomes independently—able to test or reproduce issues without relying solely on engineers.

• Guide the evolution of scalable, automated testing frameworks across APIs, data pipelines, and microservices.

• Ensure comprehensive regression and performance testing , optimizing for CI/CD automation and release stability.

• Collaborate with engineers to drive risk-based testing, data quality validation, and continuous improvement in coverage.

• Evaluate emerging QA tools and technologies—AI-driven testing, visual diffing, performance monitoring—to stay ahead of industry best practices.

Team Development and Leadership Influence

• Hire, mentor, and grow QA talent; establish a clear progression path for automation engineers and co-ops.

• Foster a psychologically safe, collaborative environment where team members can voice ideas, surface risks, and drive innovation.

• Serve as a bridge between leadership and senior QA engineers —channeling executive goals downward and surfacing technical realities upward.

• Partner closely with Sr. QA Automation Engineers as peers—leveraging their deep expertise while protecting them from unnecessary political overhead.

• Promote accountability and autonomy within the QA organization, ensuring clarity of ownership and measurable results.

Qualifications

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

• 8+ years of experience in Quality Assurance, Test Automation, or Software Engineering, including 3+ years in QA leadership roles.

• Proven success leading QA and automation initiatives in SaaS or data-intensive environments.

• Experience building QA teams from the ground up, defining processes, and delivering measurable improvements in release velocity and product quality.

Skills and Competencies

• Deep understanding of modern automation frameworks (e.g., Cypress, Playwright, Jest) and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI).

• Hands-on proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript and comfort reviewing automation scripts and frameworks.

• Solid understanding of QA principles —including the test pyramid, risk-based testing, and release management best practices.

• Strong familiarity with data stack validation (e.g., Snowflake, DBT, Tableau, Fivetran) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP).

• Exceptional communication and influence skills—capable of representing QA perspectives to senior executives and engineering leadership.

• Skilled at balancing speed vs. quality , with a pragmatic approach to testing prioritization in startup environments.

• Empathetic, emotionally intelligent leader who inspires collaboration and continuous improvement.

Preferred Attributes

• Experience scaling QA teams through high-growth stages (Series B+).

• Prior experience managing nearshore or distributed QA resources.

• Familiarity with SOC 2 and ISO 27001-related quality practices and compliance standards.

• Experience integrating QA metrics into dashboards or data tools (e.g., Tableau, Grafana, Power BI).

• A natural influencer and problem-solver who thrives in ambiguity and acts with ownership.

Key Responsibilities

This role is primarily performed in an office or remote work setting and requires the ability to:

• Sit for extended periods while working on a computer.

• Occasionally stand, walk, reach, stoop, or bend during the course of work.

• Communicate clearly and effectively via video conferencing, phone, and email.

• Occasionally lift and move items up to 25 pounds (e.g., office equipment, packages, marketing materials).

• Occasionally travel, including air and ground transportation and overnight stays, if required.

Equal Opportunity & Accommodations

Pantomath is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to legally protected characteristics and are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals — whether during the application and interview process or throughout employment. To request an accommodation, please contact Human Resources.

FLSA Compliance Statement

This position is classified as Non-Exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), meaning it is not eligible for overtime compensation. This classification is based on responsibilities involving advanced technical expertise, leadership, and independent problem-solving.