Software Quality Team Leader

The Software Quality Team Leader is responsible for leading a team of QA engineers to ensure the delivery of high‑quality, scalable, and reliable software products across Shahid’s digital platforms. This role combines hands-on quality ownership , team leadership , and process improvement , with a strong focus on OTT streaming services across mobile, web, Smart TVs, and connected devices .

The role plays a critical part in protecting the Shahid user experience by driving effective testing strategies, reducing production defects, and ensuring quality is embedded throughout the software development lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

Quality Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and support a team of manual and automation QA engineers.
• Conduct task planning, workload distribution, and day‑to‑day execution tracking.
• Support performance evaluations, goal setting, and skill development plans.
• Promote a strong quality culture and ownership mindset across the team.

Test Strategy & Execution

• Define and own test strategies for assigned products and platforms.
• Ensure adequate test coverage (functional, regression, smoke, sanity, exploratory).
• Review and approve test plans, test cases, and execution results.
• Coordinate test cycles for releases, hotfixes, and production validations.
• Ensure effective testing across OTT platforms (Web, iOS, Android, Smart TVs, STBs).

Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Drive adoption and expansion of test automation frameworks.
• Identify candidates for automation and track automation coverage KPIs.
• Work closely with automation engineers on stability and maintainability.
• Continuously improve QA processes, tools, and workflows.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration

• Act as the main QA point of contact for product managers, developers, and DevOps.
• Participate in grooming, sprint planning, retrospectives, and release readiness reviews.
• Proactively raise quality risks, release blockers, and mitigation plans.
• Ensure quality requirements are clearly understood and implemented.

Defect Management & Release Quality

• Ensure accurate defect reporting, prioritization, and lifecycle management.
• Analyze defect trends and perform root-cause analysis.
• Validate release quality gates and sign‑off decisions.
• Support post‑release monitoring and incident investigations.

Documentation & Reporting

• Maintain clear and up‑to‑date QA documentation and reporting.
• Provide regular quality status reports (coverage, defects, risks).
• Track and report KPIs such as defect leakage, test execution progress, and automation ROI.

Required Qualifications

Experience & Skills

• 6+ years in Software Quality Assurance, with at least 2 years in a leadership or senior role .
• Strong experience testing consumer-facing digital products , preferably OTT or media platforms.
• Solid understanding of SDLC, Agile/Scrum methodologies, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience testing applications across multiple platforms and devices .
• Hands-on experience with defect tracking and test management tools.
• Good understanding of test automation concepts and frameworks.

Technical Knowledge

• Strong knowledge of functional, regression, smoke, and exploratory testing.
• Familiarity with automation tools (e.g., Playwright, Selenium, Appium, or similar).
• Understanding of streaming concepts (playback, DRM, latency, bitrate, buffering).
• Experience working with APIs, logs, and basic debugging techniques.

Soft Skills

• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to balance hands‑on work with team leadership responsibilities.
• Detail‑oriented with strong problem‑solving and analytical skills.
• Comfortable working in fast‑paced, high‑scale production environments.
• Clear, professional communication in English.