Lead Quality Assurance Engineer Job Cleveland area,Ohio USA,Quality Assurance

We are seeking a Lead QA Engineer to join a growing technology team in Cleveland, OH. This individual will play a dual role as both a hands‑on quality assurance engineer and a strategic leader responsible for shaping the organization's QA vision, testing frameworks, and quality standards. The ideal candidate will bring strong automation expertise, experience leading QA initiatives, and a passion for mentoring team members while driving continuous improvement across the software development lifecycle.

Responsibilities

Lead the overall QA strategy, testing methodology, and best practices across multiple applications and projects.
Serve as a technical leader and mentor for QA engineers, providing guidance on automation frameworks, testing approaches, and quality standards.
Design, develop, and maintain automated test solutions for web applications, APIs, and integrated systems.
Partner closely with Product Managers, Developers, Business Analysts, and stakeholders to ensure quality is built into the development process.
Evaluate and recommend testing tools, frameworks, and processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Establish test plans, test cases, test data, and test execution strategies for functional, regression, integration, system, and performance testing.
Lead defect triage activities and ensure timely resolution of quality issues.
Drive risk-based testing strategies and metrics-driven quality reporting.
Support CI/CD initiatives and integrate automated testing into deployment pipelines.
Champion continuous improvement initiatives within QA and the broader engineering organization.

Required Qualifications

7+ years of experience in Software Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering, or Software Testing.
2+ years of experience leading QA initiatives, mentoring team members, or serving in a QA Lead capacity.
Strong understanding of software testing standards, methodologies, tools, and processes.
Demonstrated experience working in Agile development environments.
Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and problem‑solving skills.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
Proven ability to collaborate effectively across cross‑functional teams.

Technical Requirements

Strong automation testing experience using:
Java
Playwright with Type Script
Cucumber
TestNG
Maven
Experience with QA and collaboration tools:
Jira
Confluence
Git Hub
Git Hub Actions
Database and backend testing experience:
SQL
Oracle
Web Services
REST APIs
Performance testing experience using:
Apache JMeter
Postman
Rest Assured
Gatling
Additional technical expertise:
Systems integration testing
Data analysis and validation
SDLC methodologies
CI/CD practices
Version control tools (Git Hub)
BDD and TDD methodologies

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building or modernizing enterprise QA automation frameworks.
Experience defining QA roadmaps and testing standards across teams.
Experience managing testing efforts within Dev Ops environments.
Ability to balance strategic leadership responsibilities with hands‑on testing execution.

What We're Looking For

This role is ideal for a senior QA professional who enjoys remaining technical while also driving the broader quality vision for an organization. The Lead QA Engineer will be expected to help determine how testing is performed, recommend and implement tools and frameworks, mentor other QA engineers, and ensure quality remains a core component of the software delivery process.