Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Lead, Vice President, Onsite

State Street • Irvine, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

State Street is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Lead to champion quality engineering excellence across strategic technology initiatives. In this role, you will lead business unit-wide test automation, cloud testing, and modern quality engineering practices to deliver secure, scalable, resilient, and high-quality software solutions. This opportunity offers the chance to shape quality strategy, accelerate digital transformation, and build next-generation testing solutions leveraging cloud-native technologies and modern engineering practices within one of the world's leading financial services organizations.

Requirements

• Strong leadership and communication skills with the ability to influence technical and business stakeholders.
• Experience supporting large-scale technology modernization initiatives, balancing quality assurance needs across legacy and next-generation platforms.
• Deep understanding of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Agile, DevOps, and Quality Engineering principles.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
• Passion for innovation and adoption of AI-driven engineering practices.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills across globally distributed teams.
• Demonstrated commitment to continuous improvement, operational excellence, and quality-first culture.
• Ability to coach, mentor, and develop high-performing QA teams.
• Strong ownership, accountability, and execution focus.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• 12+ years of experience in Software Quality Assurance, Test Automation, or Quality Engineering.
• 5+ years of experience leading QA teams and enterprise testing initiatives.
• Experience leading quality engineering for large-scale financial services platforms spanning legacy technologies (COBOL, C/C++, Sybase, Oracle) and modern architectures (Java, microservices, APIs, cloud-native applications).
• Experience testing applications on AWS, including EC2, ECS, EKS, and cloud-native platforms.
• Knowledge of CI/CD tools and DevOps practices.
• Strong understanding of database testing with Sybase/Oracle and related enterprise data platforms.
• Candidate must work primarily in the Pacific Time Zone (California).
• Regular collaboration with offshore teams in India and China as well as with management and technical teams on the U.S. East Coast is required.

Nice To Haves

• Knowledge of GitHub Copilot, AI-assisted development tools, MCP Servers, and Large Language Models (LLMs) is a plus.
• Financial Services industry experience preferred.
• Relevant certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Developer, ISTQB, Certified Scrum Master, or AI/ML certifications are plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead quality engineering efforts across both modern cloud-native platforms and legacy enterprise applications, including client-server, and distributed systems, ensuring consistent quality standards throughout modernization and transformation initiatives.
• Define and execute enterprise quality engineering strategies, standards, and automation roadmaps aligned with business and technology objectives.
• Lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable test automation frameworks using Java, Selenium, Playwright, and Cucumber (BDD).
• Drive automation across Functional, Regression, Integration, End-to-End, Smoke, and Sanity testing initiatives to improve release quality and speed.
• Partner with Development, DevOps, and Product teams to embed continuous testing practices within CI/CD pipelines and Agile delivery frameworks.
• Lead testing efforts for cloud-native applications deployed on Amazon ECS and EKS, ensuring scalability, resiliency, availability, failover, and disaster recovery readiness.
• Establish quality metrics, reporting, and governance processes to provide visibility into application quality, testing effectiveness, and release readiness.
• Leverage AI-powered tools such as GitHub Copilot, MCP Servers, LLMs, and intelligent automation technologies to improve productivity, test coverage, and engineering efficiency.
• Collaborate with Architecture and Engineering teams to ensure quality considerations are incorporated into application design and development processes.
• Mentor and develop QA engineers by promoting best practices in automation, cloud testing, AI-enabled testing, and quality engineering.
• Support audit, compliance, resiliency, and risk management initiatives through robust testing controls and validation frameworks.

Benefits

• our retirement savings plan (401K) with company match
• insurance coverage including basic life, medical, dental, vision, long-term disability, and other optional additional coverages
• paid-time off including vacation, sick leave, short term disability, and family care responsibilities
• access to our Employee Assistance Program
• incentive compensation including eligibility for annual performance-based awards (excluding certain sales roles subject to sales incentive plans)
• eligibility for certain tax advantaged savings plans

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior