Manager, SW Engineering (QE)

Palo Alto Networks•Office - USA - CA - Headquarters, CA

4d•$175,400 - $283,800

About The Position

Palo Alto Networks is seeking an experienced Manager, Quality Engineering (QE) to lead its quality engineering organization and drive a scalable, automation-first approach to software quality. The role defines and executes the quality strategy, manages release readiness, strengthens system and integration testing, expands test automation, and introduces tools and processes that improve engineering efficiency and product quality. The manager will provide technical leadership across quality strategy, test engineering, release management, and cross-functional collaboration. They will work closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps/SRE, and other stakeholders to support reliable, high-quality releases across complex systems and services. The role also leads and develops Quality Engineers and Test Automation Engineers, establishes technical direction and engineering standards, and promotes quality as a shared engineering responsibility.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
At least 8 years of experience in software quality engineering, test engineering, automation, or related software engineering roles.
At least 3 years of experience managing or leading QE/Test Engineering teams.
Strong experience developing and implementing test strategies and quality engineering processes.
Proven experience with test automation frameworks and CI/CD integration.
Strong understanding of API, integration, system, regression, and end-to-end testing.
Experience managing software releases and release quality gates.
Experience testing distributed systems, microservices, APIs, cloud applications, or other complex systems.
Strong understanding of modern software development and CI/CD practices.
Excellent analytical, problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience building or scaling QE organizations.
Experience with cloud-native architectures and distributed systems.
Experience with performance, scalability, reliability, and resilience testing.
Experience building internal QE tooling and test infrastructure.
Experience with test data management and environment automation.
Experience with observability and production quality monitoring.
Experience applying AI/ML or intelligent automation to software testing.
Strong programming or scripting experience in Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar languages.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the QE strategy, quality roadmap, and engineering quality standards across products and platforms.
Establish risk-based test practices spanning functional, regression, integration, system, performance, reliability, and end-to-end testing.
Promote shift-left and automation-first quality practices across engineering teams.
Develop test strategies for new features, services, platforms, and major architectural changes.
Ensure test coverage for critical business workflows and system dependencies, and lead test planning for complex projects.
Improve test environments, test data management, and test execution processes.
Own the QE component of the software release lifecycle, including release planning, test readiness, defect triage, release validation, and production readiness.
Establish release quality gates and testing entry and exit criteria; assess release risks and communicate quality status with Engineering and Product leadership.
Drive post-release validation, production quality monitoring, and continuous improvement based on production issues.
Lead system integration and end-to-end testing across applications, services, APIs, and third-party systems.
Define integration test frameworks and approaches for distributed and service-oriented architectures, identify dependencies and integration risks, and automate validation of critical workflows.
Partner with architecture and engineering teams to improve system testability and observability.
Drive development and adoption of scalable test automation frameworks and infrastructure across UI, API, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing.
Increase automation coverage while improving test reliability, execution speed, and maintainability; reduce flaky tests and improve signal-to-noise ratio.
Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and engineering workflows, and evaluate testing tools and technologies.
Improve engineering productivity through QE tooling, automation, and intelligent test execution.
Build or sponsor internal tools, reusable testing libraries, frameworks, and utilities that reduce manual testing, accelerate releases, and improve developer feedback.
Improve test execution time using parallelization, selective testing, test impact analysis, and other optimization techniques.
Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted testing and quality engineering tools, where appropriate.
Lead, mentor, and develop Quality Engineers and Test Automation Engineers; establish technical direction, engineering standards, and career development plans.
Recruit and retain QE talent, foster ownership and continuous improvement, and balance technical leadership with people and organizational management.
Collaborate with Software Engineering, Product, DevOps/SRE, and other technical teams.
Analyze production defects, escaped issues, and testing gaps; establish root-cause analysis and corrective-action practices for significant quality issues.
Use data and metrics to improve test effectiveness and release confidence, and drive improvements in development processes, testability, observability, and quality ownership.