Technical Lead — QA Automation

TEGNA Inc. • Knoxville, TN

4h • Hybrid

About The Position

TEGNA Inc. (NYSE: TGNA) helps people thrive in their local communities by providing the trusted local news and services that matter most. With 64 television stations in 51 U.S. markets, TEGNA reaches more than 100 million people monthly across the web, mobile apps, streaming, and linear television. Together, we are building a sustainable future for local news.
We’re looking for a Technical Lead of QA Automation to own the technical direction, standards, and frameworks that power test automation across our engineering organization. In this role, you’ll be the technical authority on how we automate quality across web, native mobile, connected TV, and backend platforms, working hands on to design, build, and scale automation solutions while guiding engineering teams toward an automation-first delivery model.
This role reports to the QA Team Lead and leads through technical influence rather than people management. You’ll partner with development pods, platform teams, and engineering leadership to ensure quality is built into every stage of delivery, not added at the end. You’ll shape how automation integrates into our sprint flow, CI/CD pipelines, and release process, directly improving release confidence and reducing manual effort across the organization.
Our automation strategy is built around native, platform-aligned tooling: Playwright with TypeScript for web, Espresso (Kotlin) for Android, and XCUITest (Swift) for iOS/tvOS. You’ll own the continued evolution and adoption of these frameworks, ensuring they scale with our growing platform footprint.
This is a hybrid position based in Knoxville, TN, with regular collaboration across mobile, web, backend, CTV, and infrastructure teams.

Requirements

• 5 plus years of experience in quality engineering and test automation
• 3 plus years of experience leading automation strategy or serving as a technical lead for QA teams
• Strong hands-on experience with Playwright and TypeScript for web test automation
• Hands-on experience with native mobile automation frameworks: Espresso with Kotlin for Android and XCUITest with Swift for iOS
• Deep understanding of why native frameworks outperform wrapper-based tools like Appium in execution speed, synchronization, reliability, and maintainability
• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or similar tools
• Strong understanding of Agile delivery, sprint-based workflows, and automation-first QA practices
• Ability to lead through technical influence, guiding teams without direct management authority
• Clear communication skills with the ability to articulate technical tradeoffs and quality risks to both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders

Nice To Haves

• Experience automating tests for CTV platforms such as Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, or web-based Smart TV environments (Tizen, webOS)
• Experience testing video playback, streaming workflows, ad insertion, and media-related user journeys
• Familiarity with performance, load, or reliability testing tools and approaches
• Experience with BrowserStack or similar cloud device testing platforms
• Experience with observability tools such as New Relic for monitoring test environments and production quality signals

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction and standards for test automation across all platforms: web, iOS, Android, CTV, and backend services
• Lead the native automation strategy: Playwright with TypeScript for web, Espresso with Kotlin for Android, and XCUITest with Swift for iOS and tvOS
• Define and enforce automation patterns, framework architecture, and best practices across teams
• Drive adoption of auto-waiting, built-in synchronization, and native tooling capabilities to eliminate flaky tests and reduce maintenance overhead
• Evaluate and recommend tools, frameworks, and approaches that align with our platform-native philosophy and reduce reliance on wrapper-based abstractions
• Design, build, and maintain scalable automated test frameworks across platforms
• Implement and refine page object patterns, test data management, and parallel execution strategies
• Write and maintain automated tests that cover critical user journeys, regression paths, and edge cases
• Identify and eliminate flaky tests, reducing false negatives and increasing trust in CI/CD pipeline results
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps to support reliable, continuous releases
• Align automation execution with the team’s sprint operating model, supporting mid-sprint QA handoffs and sprint lock discipline
• Ensure automation results provide fast, actionable feedback that enables developers to resolve issues within the same sprint cycle
• Partner with infrastructure teams on test environment stability, observability, and pipeline performance
• Champion a shift-left testing culture where developers can read, write, and maintain automated tests alongside feature code
• Partner with development pods to improve testability, coverage, and automation effectiveness across their platforms
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to QA engineers and developers on automation best practices, framework usage, and test design
• Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to align quality strategy with delivery goals and platform priorities
• Provide visibility into automation coverage, quality risks, and release readiness across teams
• Extend automation strategy to cover CTV platforms including Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung, and LG, addressing device fragmentation and platform-specific constraints
• Develop approaches for validating video playback behavior, remote navigation (DPAD), ad insertion, and lean-back UI patterns across CTV devices
• Partner with streaming application teams on post-release validation, playback metrics, and regression coverage for CTV releases
• Use AI tools such as Claude Code and other AI-assisted development tools to accelerate test scaffolding, generate edge case coverage, and draft test documentation
• Evaluate emerging AI capabilities for test generation, maintenance, and intelligent test selection
• Ensure all AI-generated test code is reviewed, validated, and meets the same quality standards as manually authored tests

Benefits

• TEGNA offers comprehensive benefits designed to safeguard the physical, mental and financial health of our employees and their families. TEGNA offers two medical plan options for full and part-time employees through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as access to dental and eye care coverage; fertility, surrogacy and adoption assistance; disability and life insurance.
• Our 401(k) program offers full, part-time and temporary employees the opportunity to contribute 1% - 80% of their pay on a pre-tax basis to TEGNA’s 401(k). Contributions made up to the first 4% of pay are eligible for a 100% match from the company and are 100% vested from day one.
• Regardless of participation in TEGNA medical plans, ALL employees and their eligible family members receive nine free virtual doctor’s appointments with a physician through Teladoc, and 12 free annual therapy sessions with a licensed clinician through Spring Health.
• TEGNA offers a generous Paid Time Off (PTO) benefit as well as nine paid holidays per year.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed