Director of Quality Assurance

Strategic Leadership & Ownership

Define and execute the QA strategy across all Xsolla products, aligning quality objectives with business goals and product roadmaps.

Own QA deliverables end-to-end - from test planning through release sign-off - and be accountable for outcomes, not just activities.

Establish and enforce quality gates, defect governance policies, and release readiness criteria across all product teams.

Drive organizational maturity: evolve the QA function from reactive testing to proactive quality engineering embedded in every stage of the SDLC .

Represent QA at the executive level - articulate quality risks, tradeoffs, and resource needs to VP/C-level stakeholders with clarity and data.

Technical Excellence

Architect and oversee enterprise-grade test automation frameworks spanning UI (Playwright), API, database validation (SQL), and performance testing (K6).

Define and maintain standards for test code quality - including code reviews, PR contributions, reusable libraries, and modular test design.

Deep understanding of Git workflows - branching strategies, merge request reviews, repository hygiene, and code versioning best practices across multiple repositories.

Expert-level knowledge of CI/CD pipelines - design, optimize, and troubleshoot automated build, test, and deployment pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar).

Ensure all automation is fully integrated into CI/CD pipelines, with clear pass/fail signals, automated regression gates, and performance benchmarks at every release stage.

Drive adoption of infrastructure-as-code practices for test environments - containerized test execution, ephemeral environments, and environment parity between staging and production.

Evaluate, select, and implement QA tooling - including test management platforms (Qase), observability tools, and defect tracking integrations.

AI Integration & Innovation

Proven track record of using AI in day-to-day QA activities - not aspirational, but demonstrated. You have used AI tools to generate test cases, write automation code, analyze test results, identify flaky tests, or accelerate debugging.

Champion and operationalize AI-assisted quality engineering across the organization - specifically using Claude AI for code generation, test design, automation scripting, and documentation.

Define governance frameworks for AI-generated test artifacts - validation, review, and sign-off processes to ensure AI outputs meet quality standards.

Stay current with AI/ML advancements relevant to testing - intelligent test selection, predictive defect analysis, autonomous test generation, and self-healing automation.

Establish metrics to measure the impact of AI adoption on QA velocity, coverage, and defect detection rates.

Team Leadership & People Development

Lead, mentor, and develop a distributed team of 30+ QA professionals - including QA Leads, Senior QA Engineers, and QA Engineers - across multiple time zones (Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific).

Build a high-performance culture rooted in ownership, technical excellence, continuous learning, and psychological safety.

Conduct regular 1:1s, career development conversations, and performance reviews. Identify and grow future QA leaders.

Design and implement onboarding programs, skill development paths, and technical training curricula - including AI literacy for all QA team members.

Manage resource allocation and capacity planning across multiple concurrent projects, ensuring predictable and sustainable QA delivery.

Navigate cross-cultural team dynamics with sensitivity and effectiveness - a truly global team requires a global leadership mindset.

Process Rigor & Quality Governance

Enforce rigorous QA processes across the organization: • Test case management : Create, maintain, and execute comprehensive test cases in Qase with full traceability (pass, fail, blocked statuses).

Bug documentation : Ensure all staging bugs are filed with detailed reproduction steps, expected vs. actual behavior, environment details, screenshots/videos, and severity classification - following established training standards.

Automation framework documentation : Maintain clear, up-to-date documentation for all automation frameworks, ensuring any engineer can onboard and contribute.

QA Score : Drive iterative improvements in QA Score metrics - tracking automation coverage, defect escape rate, test execution velocity, and regression stability.

Define and track QA KPIs and OKRs - present quality dashboards and trend analysis to leadership regularly.

Conduct root cause analysis on production escapes and implement systemic corrective actions.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Partner closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps, and Release Management to embed quality practices into every phase of the development lifecycle.

Work effectively in Agile/Scrum environments - participate in and drive sprint planning, retrospectives, daily stand-ups, and release ceremonies.

Act as the primary QA stakeholder for cross-functional initiatives - environment strategy, deployment automation, incident response, and post-mortem processes.

Build strong relationships with engineering leadership to ensure QA is not a bottleneck but an accelerator.

Common Expectations Across All QA Roles

Must be technical and able to write code for testing and automation.

Use Claude AI to assist in code creation, automation, and test design.

Follow QA processes rigorously: create and execute robust test cases in Qase , maintain clear documentation in automation frameworks, ensure traceability of executed test cases with statuses (pass, fail, blocked), and file Staging Bugs with detailed documentation following training standards.

Contribute to iterative improvements in QA Score and testing processes.

Strong communication and collaboration skills, analytical mindset, and commitment to continuous learning.

Ability to work effectively in Agile/Scrum environments, participating in sprint planning, retrospectives, and daily stand-ups.