QA Manager

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation.
Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.
Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers.
**Job Purpose**
Reporting directly to the QA & Automation Manager, the QA Manager is expected to lead the test delivery for large and complex Projects. Responsible for building out the testing strategy, delivery planning, project level quality and technical assurance, reporting,resource planning, budgets and estimating, as well managing day to day testing related tasks on initiatives.
Will be responsible for delivering Functional Testing, Non-Functional Testing, User Acceptance Testing, QA of 3rd Party Software and either Agile and Waterfall delivery models with an expectation of maximising test automation.
**What you'll do**:

- Provide Test and QA leadership to the Project team, stakeholders, and the test team
- Provide people strategic, technical leadership and direction to support the delivery of effective testing
- Define effective test plans and approaches for bi-modal delivery models and technology landscapes, ensuring cost effective testing solutions balanced with business and technical risk utilising automation to the maximum
- Direct responsibility for appropriate test tooling on projects to meet testing needs (Manual, Automation, NFT, Process)
- Management of a testing team, geographically dispersed, technical, and non-technical, experienced, and inexperienced, internal, and external
- Line management of testing team, including appraisals, performance management, 121, training and development guidance and support, succession planning, crises support
- Provide exceptional guidance and support to the test programme manager in defining test strategies, test processes, testing techniques, use of tools / frameworks / technologies, and data across a variety of delivery and technology landscapes and methodologies,balancing a delivery and commercial focus with the need to deliver quality outputs
- Adept at creating large and complex test Projects plans using MS Projects or equivalent
- Adept at summarising complex plans on to a plan on a page
- Proficient at working with Project Leadership Team to develop cohesive plans inclusive of testing timelines
- Responsible for the production, quality, and maintenance of ALL testing artifacts
- Remain at the forefront of delivery, testing and technology developments to provide support and guidance to pragmatically adopt these to improve testing effectiveness and efficiency
**Desired Knowledge / Experience / Skills**
**Essential**:

- Test / QA Management experience
- Experience of management Projects with large scale budgets
- Experience in communicating at all levels, ranging from testers through Steering level meetings / Stakeholders
- Demonstrable experience of defining Test Strategies for complex, multi-disciplinary, multi-platform engineered products
- Exceptional understanding of technology and testing, including common solutions and architectures, emerging technology and testing trends, and test techniques/technologies/tooling
- Previous line management experience.
- Strong experience working within an agile development environment and experience working within a waterfall delivery methodology.
- Knowledge of DevOps and Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery.
- In Depth knowledge of Azure Cloud and AWS and associated testing requirements such as IAC Pesta Testing
- Experience working with and managing quality from external suppliers.
**Highly Desirable**:

- Experience using Jira / Test Rail / Zephyr for Test Case Management / Defect Management / Testing Metrics Reporting
- A deep understanding of Automation and Non-Functional Testing process and tools - knowledge
**What you'll like about working here**
As a Canada Life UK colleague, you'll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive reward package including income protection, private medical insurance and life assurance, along with a generous pension and bonus scheme. You'll also receive the support youneed with your personal and professional development.
**Diversity and inclusion**
Canada Life is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Our role as an employer of choice is to provide the right environment for talented people to do their best work, by respecting, understanding and valuing individual differences