Quality Lead, Analytics Lifecycle R&D

SAS•Cary HQ, NC

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Analytics Lifecycle division is looking for a Quality Lead to join the R&D organization. The Quality Lead is a senior leadership role within the Analytics Lifecycle (ALC) department, responsible for raising the quality bar across the organization. This role sets direction, drives consistency, and leads improvements in how quality is built into ALC software—across teams with varying levels of testing maturity. The focus is not only on improving tests, but on improving outcomes: product reliability, customer trust, and confidence in delivery across the Analytics Lifecycle. The Quality Lead provides horizontal leadership for testing and quality across the department. They oversee and coordinate testing activities, define and evolve testing strategies, and establish common frameworks, tools, and practices that enable teams to deliver high-quality, testable, and scalable software. They work closely with development teams to improve test coverage, effectiveness, and efficiency, while ensuring testing reflects real customer workflows and end-to-end ALC usage. In addition to setting strategy and standards, the Quality Lead remains hands-on where it matters most, contributing directly to complex testing efforts and guiding teams through high‑risk or technically challenging scenarios. The Quality Lead will provide mentorship and coaching to testers and engineering leaders alike, helping teams strengthen quality practices over time rather than enforcing a one‑size‑fits‑all approach. This role reports to the Sr Director of the department and is a key member of the ALC leadership team. As a leader, they influence decisions around release readiness, risk, and prioritization, and serve as the quality advocate across ALC. They coordinate across teams within the department, partner with teams across the division and SAS, and represent ALC quality interests in broader R&D initiatives.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent experience).
12+ years of experience developing and/or testing software, including eight years of experience with software testing evaluation.
Prior experience leading projects is required.
Experience in the development and testing of large complex software products.
Proven ability to influence practices and drive change across teams without direct authority.
Demonstrated ability to navigate and resolve technical disagreements in support of shared delivery and quality goals.
Demonstrated experience designing automation-first testing strategies that improve coverage, efficiency, and confidence while reducing reliance on manual testing.
Proficiency in Python for test automation and tooling, including experience with Pytest or similar Python-based testing frameworks
Demonstrated experience with performance, scalability, or reliability testing, including designing tests that reflect real-world usage and system behavior.
Demonstrated experience in working with test technologies and frameworks (e.g. Playwright, Jest, JUnit, Cucumber, WebDriverIO).
Demonstrated experience with unit, regression, and integration testing.
Demonstrated experience with automation in CI/CD and associated tools (e.g. Jenkins, Git, GitHub, Gerrit).
Demonstrated experience in working with containerization technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes
Demonstrated experience with Agile development practices and tools such as JIRA.
Understanding of software security (SAST, SCA, DAST).

Nice To Haves

Adaptability: Maintaining effectiveness when experiencing major changes in work responsibilities or environment (e.g., people, processes, structure, or culture); adjusting effectively to change by exploring the benefits, trying new approaches, and collaborating with others to make the change successful.
Collaborating: Working cooperatively with others to help a team or work group achieve its goals.
Decision Making: Identifying and understanding problems and opportunities by gathering, analyzing, and interpreting quantitative and qualitative information; choosing the best course of action by establishing clear decision criteria, generating and evaluating alternatives, and making timely decisions; taking action that is consistent with available facts and constraints and optimizes probable consequences.
Partnering with teams across the department to identify the most impactful quality and testing priorities, and help teams build the capability to address them effectively.
Reviewing and improving defect triage and bug management practices across teams to ensure they are effective, consistent, and supporting timely decision making.
Assessing test coverage and effectiveness, identifying opportunities to improve confidence and outcomes while balancing effort and execution time.
Evaluating the use of observability, performance, and related tooling across the department to strengthen customer like performance testing and system insight

Responsibilities

Establish and evolve a department-level quality strategy aligned to ALC outcomes, modernizing testing practices where needed, assessing quality maturity across teams, and providing thought leadership that drives measurable improvement across ALC and R&D.
Champion end-to-end quality across the Analytics Lifecycle, ensuring integrated workflows are testable, reliable, and meet performance expectations under real customer-like usage.
Define, track, and evolve quality metrics and signals, including performance and scalability indicators, that provide actionable insights into product health and guide engineering and release decisions.
Act as a change agent across the department, challenging existing practices where appropriate and coaching leaders and teams to embed quality thinking into planning, design, and delivery, while mentoring and developing quality-related talent across teams.
Partner with leadership to assess release readiness, articulate quality risks, and support informed delivery decisions.
Lead the modernization of testing approaches and tooling, challenging the status quo and driving increased use of automation to improve effectiveness and efficiency across teams.
Partner with the development teams in scoping product requirements, estimating efforts, and planning release schedules.
Provide technical leadership to teams delivering high quality, testable, and scalable software, including internal tools and libraries.
Coordinate cross-department testing activities, including testing events, pre-release validation, and upgrade and migration efforts.
Architect and guide complex CI/CD pipelines and automation, ensuring quality is built into delivery workflows.
Serve as ALC’s primary liaison for testing and quality across R&D, aligning practices and contributing to shared standards and initiatives.
Interface with CIS, DevOps and Infrastructure to ensure the software and hardware needs of the department are met.
Ensure security testing practices align with organizational policies, supporting secure software development goals.
Collaborate with technical writers to share information with end users in the form of product documentation and / or white papers.
Be encouraged to participate in open-source projects on behalf of SAS.
Ensure all applicable security policies and processes are followed to support the organization's secure software development goals.
Embrace curiosity, passion, authenticity and accountability. These are our values and influence everything we do.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, prescription, dental and vision plans.
Medical plan options include: PPO with low annual deductible and copays.
HDHP combined with a health savings account with a contribution from SAS (no access to on-site health care center).
Onsite Health Care Center (HQ) that’s free to employees and family members enrolled in the PPO plan.
There's a pharmacy too! Not local to HQ? The pharmacy will ship prescriptions for no additional charge!
An industry-leading 401k plan.
Tuition Assistance Program and programs and resources to support your development
Generous time away including vacation time, a variety of paid holidays, and our much-loved U.S. Winter Wellness Break between December 25 and January 1.
Volunteer Time Off, parental leave and unlimited paid sick days.
Generous childcare benefits for all full-time employees.