Head of Testing Services

**Reports to Head of Service Delivery**: With the continued investment in technology operationally, and in support of our digital transformation within Aztec Group, we are introducing a new role for a Head of Testing Services ("HoTS"). Reporting to the Head of Service Delivery, this individual will be responsible for growing and scaling the Testing team to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business across a broad range of products and services, developing and expanding the existing team, and building a wider service comprising both additional internal staff and staff from third-party service providers. The HoTS will be required to provide strategic support and guidance to business leaders and technology directors and third-party suppliers responsible for oversight and delivery of change initiatives, influencing decision making and clearly communicating decisions, priorities, and relevant project information at appropriate levels regarding testing requirements and commitments. This individual will be driven to proactively focus on strategic initiatives and planning activities to improve efficiency and effectiveness of testing processes and outcomes and be motivated to share knowledge of testing capabilities, risks, and opportunities with project leads cross-functionally. The HoTS should be able to clearly demonstrate excellent leadership, stakeholder management and communication skills as well as technical, analytical, and organisational skills. **Key responsibilities**: - Build a Quality Assurance / Test Management function which can support the delivery of large complex technology-based projects and programmes, and technology operations within a rapid growth business. - Define and execute a complete end-to-end testing strategy including both manual and automated testing approaches within traditional delivery and DevOps models. - Build strong trusted relationships with project sponsors, business leaders, technology owners and external strategic partners. - Identify, contract and manage third party suppliers of nearshore and offshore testing services to augment the in-house team. - Identify, select and implement testing tools and services with track record in contract negotiation, commercial and supplier management in the testing space. - Provide leadership and technical expertise within test automation, testing methodologies, testing processes, synthetic data services, and testing tools and techniques. - Design and implement a testing framework and strategy, leveraging automation and AI solutions across all areas of testing (system integration, performance, security etc.). - Proactively identify develop and implement opportunities for operational efficiencies using analytical skills, data, and feedback as part of continuous improvement. - Provide technical leadership and support the creation of complex automation testing. - Provide appropriate, forward-looking decision making to manage complex priorities supporting the delivery of the Aztec vision. - Operate as an advocate for quality throughout the product development lifecycle and be accountable in the transition process to Production. - Stay across the development of external trends and technology changes in relation to Testing and QA including the influence of AI and import this understanding into the Testing strategy on an iterative basis. - Manage and develop the Testing team and hold budgetary responsibility for the Testing cost centre managing internal and third-party costs associated with the Testing team and services. **Skills, knowledge, and expertise**: - Extensive leadership experience of an enterprise testing function; high level of experience in a similar role implementing automated testing. - Ability to influence and manage senior stakeholders, conflicting priorities and balance business and quality drivers in decision making. - Ability to build successful teams, understanding different styles and how people work together. - Strong people leadership skills with the ability to develop test professions within the team forging career paths as the team expands. - Experience in designing and executing a hybrid inhouse / third party test strategy. - Ability to present ideas in business and user-friendly language. - Extensive experience of different project and development methodologies, Waterfall, Agile and DevOps, and the management of testing within both project and product-based delivery models. - Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment. - Excellent communication skills and the ability to extrapolate requirements and deliverables. - Experience in the IT change management lifecycle process. - Should be a strong critical thinker, able to analyse releases from multiple perspectives. - Strong documentation skills, including requirements elicitation, specification documentation. - Relevant professional qualifications. **General information**: We will provide the training, both in house for relev