Test & Evaluation Lead (Senior)

DecisionPoint | Cortek•Chicago, IL

21h•Remote

About The Position

DecisionPoint seeks a senior Test & Evaluation Lead to own the testing strategy and oversee test planning and execution for the USMEPCOM ENLIST program. The role aligns testing activities, artifacts, schedules, requirements coverage, verification evidence, defect management, and release testing with the approved Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP) and Government requirements. It establishes test objectives, scope, methods, environments, criteria, responsibilities, and reporting expectations, and ensures appropriate risk-based coverage of mission workflows, business rules, interfaces, security corrections, and operational capabilities. The lead coordinates with Government stakeholders, mission liaisons, analysts, architects, developers, QA and cybersecurity personnel, DevSecOps engineers, trainers, and operations teams. Responsibilities include maintaining requirements traceability and objective evidence; guiding testing across teams and environments; leading defect triage and verification; supporting Government user acceptance testing; integrating automated tests and quality gates into delivery pipelines; reporting test metrics and quality risks; and providing evidence-based release-readiness recommendations. The position also mentors testing personnel and leads continuous improvement of testing practices. The position is remote, with Chicago-area candidates preferred.

Requirements

Active Secret clearance or higher.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, software engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent permitted by the applicable labor category.
At least eight years of relevant professional experience.
Experience leading software test strategy and test-planning activities.
Experience establishing and maintaining requirements traceability and test-coverage reporting.
Experience defining, collecting, reviewing, and maintaining objective verification evidence.
Experience planning, coordinating, and evaluating release testing.
Experience developing or aligning testing activities with a TEMP or comparable governing test plan.
Experience leading defect triage, correction verification, and release-risk assessment.
Ability to evaluate requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, interfaces, and designs for completeness and testability.
Ability to coordinate functional, integration, system, regression, and user acceptance testing across multiple teams and environments.
Ability to communicate test status, quality risks, coverage gaps, unresolved defects, and release recommendations to technical and executive stakeholders.
CompTIA Security+ CE or another Government-approved certification satisfying the required IAT Level II qualification and applicable current DoD 8140 work-role requirements.
Strong leadership, analytical, risk-assessment, facilitation, technical documentation, and communication skills.
Ability to collaborate effectively with Government representatives, mission stakeholders, analysts, developers, architects, cybersecurity personnel, DevSecOps engineers, testers, and operations teams.

Nice To Haves

ISTQB Advanced Level Test Management certification.
Additional advanced software-testing, quality-management, or test-automation certifications.
Experience supporting federal or Department of Defense software-development, modernization, or test and evaluation programs.
Experience leading testing for mission-critical, regulated, security-sensitive, or high-availability systems.
Experience testing military accession processing, personnel processing, or other complex rules-driven workflows.
Experience developing or maintaining a TEMP, Requirements Traceability Matrix, test plan, test report, or comparable Government test artifact.
Experience leading Government user acceptance testing, operational validation, or formal release-acceptance activities.
Experience with test-management and defect-tracking platforms such as Azure DevOps, Jira, TestRail, Zephyr, Xray, or comparable tools.
Experience with automated testing frameworks, CI/CD quality gates, service virtualization, or test-data management.
Experience with API, interface, database, accessibility, performance, security, resilience, or migration testing.
Familiarity with Section 508 accessibility testing and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Familiarity with Agile, DevSecOps, risk-based testing, configuration management, and secure software-development practices.
Experience mentoring test engineers or leading a multi-team testing function.

Responsibilities

Develop, maintain, and govern the program’s software test and evaluation strategy.
Align testing activities, artifacts, schedules, and evidence with the approved TEMP and related Government requirements.
Define test objectives, scope, levels, methods, environments, entry and exit criteria, roles, responsibilities, and reporting expectations.
Develop risk-based testing approaches for mission workflows, business rules, interfaces, data exchanges, security corrections, and operational capabilities.
Ensure appropriate test coverage across requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, interfaces, risks, and release content.
Establish and maintain traceability among requirements, test cases, test data, results, defects, corrections, and release decisions; oversee the Requirements Traceability Matrix and test-coverage reporting.
Review requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, interface specifications, and technical designs for clarity, completeness, consistency, and testability.
Coordinate preparation of test plans, scenarios, cases, scripts, data, expected results, and execution schedules.
Guide functional, integration, system, end-to-end, regression, exploratory, security, accessibility, performance, and user acceptance testing as applicable.
Coordinate testing across development, integration, test, staging, and other Government-approved environments, and ensure environments, configurations, interfaces, accounts, data, tools, and dependencies are ready.
Define standards for test execution records and objective verification evidence; ensure evidence is complete, repeatable, traceable, securely maintained, and suitable for Government review.
Review test results, execution evidence, coverage information, unresolved risks, and release impacts.
Lead defect-triage meetings and coordinate severity, priority, ownership, disposition, correction, retesting, and closure decisions.
Ensure defect records include reproduction steps, expected and actual results, evidence, affected requirements, and release impacts; oversee verification of corrections and targeted regression testing.
Identify systemic quality trends, recurring defects, coverage gaps, and process weaknesses and recommend corrective actions.
Coordinate release testing and establish release-specific test scope, readiness criteria, schedules, and reporting.
Provide evidence-based release-readiness recommendations and identify unresolved defects, incomplete coverage, environmental limitations, and residual risks that may affect release decisions.
Support Government user acceptance testing by coordinating participants, cases, data, schedules, evidence, findings, and corrective actions.
Coordinate testing for urgent security fixes, production defects, modernization changes, interfaces, and migration activities.
Work with cybersecurity personnel to validate approved security remediation and assess regression impacts.
Coordinate with CI/CD engineers to integrate appropriate automated tests and quality gates into delivery pipelines.
Establish and report metrics covering execution progress, requirements coverage, defect trends, correction rates, automation, and release quality.
Prepare test status reports, quality assessments, decision briefings, release recommendations, and Government-required test artifacts.
Support sprint planning, demonstrations, reviews, retrospectives, release planning, and program-governance activities.
Mentor QA and testing personnel and promote consistent test methods, evidence standards, and defect-management practices.
Lead continuous improvement of testing, automation, traceability, evidence management, defect prevention, and release validation.