Lead QA Engineer

Tempus AI•Aliso Viejo, CA

1d•$110,000 - $165,000

About The Position

Tempus AI is hiring a Lead QA Engineer to own 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. The role is the senior-most technical voice on how the organization validates its software and offers the opportunity to shape quality engineering across a growing clinical software organization. The Lead QA Engineer will establish test architecture and automation standards for Senior and mid-level QA engineers; own nightly regression and CI/CD test orchestration; and lead release-readiness and go/no-go decisions based on evidence. The role also sets standards for non-functional testing and responsible AI-assisted QA workflows, mentors the QA/SDET team, and remains hands-on in automation for high-risk areas. 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 experience owning test architecture and automation standards across multiple applications or teams.
Expert-level programming ability in Java and/or Python, with strong design instincts, including Page Object Model, dependency management, avoiding brittle waits and copy-paste tests, and treating test code as production code.
Deep hands-on experience with 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 CI/CD automation using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Bamboo, or similar, 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 and hands-on use of tools such as JMeter, k6, or Gatling.
Experience with cloud-native delivery, especially AWS (ECS/Fargate, Lambda, S3) or Azure, and containers such as Docker 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 of testing in a validated or regulated environment.
Proven mentorship of Senior and mid-level engineers through pairing, code review, and framework onboarding.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including explaining quality risk and trade-offs to executive and non-QA stakeholders.
Ability to set technical direction and independently drive multi-quarter initiatives, making pragmatic trade-offs among coverage, speed, and effort.
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 final reviewer for test-framework pull requests.
Own CI/CD test orchestration, 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, represent quality and testability in design reviews and requirements, contribute to definitions of ready and done, and build quality gates into delivery pipelines.
Own the compliance posture of test practices for regulated components, including HIPAA and SOX coverage, PHI handling, access controls, audit trails, and requirement-to-test-to-result traceability; serve as the QA 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 trends.
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 spanning product, environment, test data, and test harness; drive root-cause resolution across teams.
Set standards for performance, load, and resilience testing and for responsible AI-assisted QA workflows, including test authoring, failure triage, and coverage analysis; ensure tests are correct.
Partner with software engineering, DevOps, and product leadership, and represent quality in architecture, platform, and release-process decisions.
Personally design, build, and maintain automation for the portfolio’s highest-risk areas, and validate scheduled night-time and off-hours deployments in lower and production environments.