Sr. Director of Quality Assurance

Babel Street • Reston, VA

15h • $220,000 - $250,000

About The Position

The Sr. Director of Quality Assurance will own the strategy, operating model, and execution discipline required to materially improve software quality across Babel Street’s engineering organization. This leader will establish a modern QA function that improves release confidence, reduces production defects, strengthens customer trust, and enables Engineering to ship faster without sacrificing reliability. This role is responsible for building a scalable quality model across products, platforms, APIs, data pipelines, and AI-enabled workflows. The Sr. Director of QA will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Security, Customer Experience, and Delivery to define quality standards, implement test automation, mature release readiness, and create measurable accountability for quality outcomes. The ideal candidate is a hands-on quality leader who can operate strategically while also building practical systems, processes, and teams. They should bring strong experience in enterprise software quality, automated testing, release governance, regression management, and modern SDLC practices.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software quality assurance, test automation, engineering, or related technical leadership roles.
• 5+ years of experience leading QA teams, quality engineering teams, or enterprise test automation functions.
• Strong experience building QA functions in enterprise SaaS, data platforms, regulated software, federal/government technology, cybersecurity, intelligence, or similarly complex technical environments.
• Demonstrated experience improving release quality, reducing defect escape rates, and implementing measurable quality programs across multiple engineering teams.
• Deep knowledge of modern QA practices, including automated testing, regression testing, API testing, UI testing, integration testing, performance testing, and release readiness.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, quality gates, test automation frameworks, and DevSecOps practices.
• Experience defining test strategies for complex distributed systems, cloud platforms, APIs, data pipelines, and customer-facing applications.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure.
• Strong working knowledge of Agile delivery, SDLC governance, backlog management, release planning, and production support processes.
• Ability to work effectively with senior Engineering, Product, Security, Customer Experience, and executive stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to define metrics, interpret defect and incident trends, and translate quality data into actionable improvements.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain quality risks, tradeoffs, and improvement plans clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting quality practices in regulated environments, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, FedRAMP, or similar control frameworks, preferred.
• Experience with AI/ML testing, evaluation frameworks, data quality testing, or agentic workflow validation preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field preferred.
• Equivalent practical experience in software engineering, quality engineering, enterprise platforms, or technical leadership will be considered.
• Advanced degree or relevant certifications in quality engineering, software testing, cloud platforms, security, or agile delivery are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define and implement the enterprise QA strategy, including the operating model, standards, tooling, metrics, and team structure required to improve software quality across the organization.
• Build and lead a centralized QA function that partners effectively with distributed engineering teams while establishing consistent quality standards and release expectations.
• Create a modern test automation strategy across unit, integration, API, UI, regression, data, and end-to-end testing.
• Establish clear release readiness criteria, including test coverage expectations, regression completion, defect thresholds, performance validation, and production sign-off.
• Partner with Engineering leadership to mature the SDLC, including improved code promotion, test environments, UAT practices, release schedules, and production deployment controls.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive regression testing program for critical customer workflows, platform capabilities, APIs, and data products.
• Define quality metrics and reporting, including defect escape rate, test coverage, automation coverage, release readiness, defect aging, severity trends, and production incident correlation.
• Improve customer confidence by reducing avoidable production defects, increasing release predictability, and ensuring quality issues are visible and actively managed.
• Partner with Product to ensure acceptance criteria, test plans, and release validation are embedded earlier in the development lifecycle.
• Partner with Security and Compliance to ensure QA processes support FedRAMP, SOC 2, NIST-aligned controls, vulnerability remediation, auditability, and evidence collection where applicable.
• Develop QA practices for AI-enabled products and workflows, including evaluation frameworks, deterministic test cases, prompt and model behavior validation, data quality checks, hallucination detection, and repeatability controls.
• Evaluate, implement, and manage QA tooling, automation frameworks, test management systems, CI/CD quality gates, and reporting dashboards.
• Lead performance and scalability testing practices for critical systems, including APIs, search, data ingestion, high-volume workflows, and customer-facing applications.
• Create a culture of quality ownership where QA is not a downstream gate, but an integrated part of how engineering teams design, build, test, and release software.
• Recruit, develop, and manage QA engineers, automation engineers, test leads, and quality-focused technical talent.

Benefits

• Health Benefits: Babel Street covers 85-100% monthly premium costs for Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability insurances – for you and your family!
• Retirement Plans: Babel Street offers both a Traditional and Roth 401(K) with a very competitive match.
• Unlimited Flexible Leave: We trust our employees to manage their own time and balance their personal and work lives.
• Holidays: Babel Street provides employees with 12 paid Federal Holidays
• Tuition Reimbursement: We are committed to investing in our employees. One way we do that is with our Tuition Reimbursement Program for continuing education.

What This Job Offers

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