Lead QA Engineer

Tempus AI•Aliso Viejo, CA

About The Position

Tempus AI is a clinical laboratory with automation capabilities focused on delivering quality results to patients quickly. The Lead QA Engineer owns the quality engineering strategy for a portfolio of in-house-developed clinical software, including a HIPAA-compliant clinical order platform and supporting data-query and ETL tooling. This senior technical role establishes test architecture and automation standards, owns nightly regression and CI/CD test orchestration, and leads evidence-based release readiness and go/no-go decisions. The role partners with software engineering, DevOps, and product leadership to shape quality practices and delivery decisions. It remains hands-on, designing and maintaining automation for high-risk areas and validating scheduled nighttime and off-hours deployments in lower and production environments. Knowledge of genetic testing, molecular biology, or other scientific disciplines is a plus but is not required.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software QA or test engineering, including 7+ years of hands-on test automation and 3+ years as the lead, staff, or principal-level technical owner of a test practice.
Demonstrated ownership of test architecture and automation standards across multiple applications or teams.
Expert-level programming ability in Java and/or Python, with strong design instincts and experience treating test code as production code.
Deep hands-on experience with modern browser automation such as Playwright and/or Selenium WebDriver, and test runners such as JUnit 5 or TestNG, built with Maven or Gradle.
Deep hands-on experience with API test automation and tools such as REST Assured or Postman, including status, schema, and contract validation and authentication flows.
Experience owning automation in CI/CD systems such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or Bamboo, including pipeline design, scheduled and triggered runs, artifacts, and test reporting such as Allure.
Advanced SQL and relational database skills, such as MySQL, and a defensible approach to test data management for regulated data.
Experience setting performance and load testing strategy, with hands-on use of tools such as JMeter, k6, or Gatling.
Experience with cloud-native delivery, especially AWS services such as ECS/Fargate, Lambda, and S3, or Azure, and with Docker containers for reproducible, parallelized test execution.
Practical experience with observability tools such as Datadog or CloudWatch and application logs to investigate defects and validate non-functional behavior.
Working knowledge of healthcare standards and compliance, including HIPAA, SOX, HL7, FHIR, and similar standards, and experience testing in validated or regulated environments.
Proven mentorship of Senior and mid-level engineers through pairing, code review, and framework onboarding.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to explain quality risks and trade-offs to executive and non-QA stakeholders.
Ability to set technical direction and independently drive multi-quarter initiatives, balancing coverage, speed, and effort pragmatically.
Bachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Nice To Haves

ISTQB/ASTQB certification at Advanced Level or above.
Experience in a CLIA/CAP laboratory, FDA-regulated, or SOX-controlled software environment, including audit support.
Experience building or operating AI/LLM-assisted QA workflows, automated failure summarization, test generation, or agent-based regression triage.
Knowledge of genetic testing, molecular biology, or other scientific-related disciplines.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end quality engineering strategy across the application portfolio, including test architecture, tooling selection, and coverage targets.
Set and enforce automation framework architecture across suites and repositories, including reusable page objects and fixtures, shared utilities, dependency and version management, and stable selectors; serve as the final reviewer for test-framework pull requests.
Own CI/CD test orchestration end to end, including deployment-triggered and nightly regression runs, health checks, artifact and version gating, reporting, and automated notifications.
Lead release readiness and go/no-go decisions by consolidating risk assessments, validation evidence, and quality metrics into recommendations for engineering and product leadership.
Drive shift-left practices across supported Agile Scrum teams and represent quality and testability in design reviews, requirements, and definitions of ready and done.
Build quality gates into the delivery pipeline rather than leaving them until the end of a sprint.
Own the compliance posture of test practices for regulated components, covering HIPAA and SOX, PHI handling, access controls, audit trails, and requirement-to-test-to-result traceability; serve as the QA point of contact for audit and validation activities.
Define, publish, and act on quality metrics, including automation coverage, flake rate, escape rate, MTTR, and regression runtime, and drive improvement over time.
Mentor and develop the QA/SDET team, including Senior engineers, through code review, pairing, framework onboarding, technical roadmaps, and career development; partner with hiring managers on interviewing, leveling, and onboarding.
Serve as the final escalation point for complex or systemic failures across product, environment, test data, and harness, and drive root cause resolution across teams.
Set standards for non-functional testing, including performance, load, and resilience, and for responsible AI-assisted QA workflows, while ensuring correctness of shipped tests.
Partner with software engineering, DevOps, and product leadership, representing quality in architecture, platform, and release-process decisions.
Personally design, build, and maintain automation for the portfolio’s highest-risk areas.
Validate scheduled nighttime and off-hours deployments in lower and production environments.