Manager, Digital Test Center of excellence

Role Purpose

The Manager, Digital Testing leads and governs end-to-end testing across Saudia's digital platforms — from test strategy and framework design through to daily test execution, defect management, and release sign-off. The role is the single accountable owner for all testing activities, including automation architecture, test bank management, test data provisioning, regression testing, performance and security testing, UAT coordination, test environments, and test tooling.

The function operates as a specialized engineering discipline within the Digital Operations & Quality division, ensuring every digital release is thoroughly validated before it reaches customers.

• Define, own, and continuously evolve the Digital Testing Strategy, covering test types, automation principles, coverage targets, risk-based prioritization, and testing standards across all digital platforms and delivery teams.
• Design and govern the test automation framework architecture across web, mobile, API, and end-to-end test layers — selecting and owning tooling (Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Appium, REST-Assured, or equivalent) aligned to the digital technology stack.
• Build and maintain the enterprise test bank — a versioned, structured repository of regression scripts, reusable test components, page objects, data fixtures, and API test collections — ensuring reuse, version control, and consistency across delivery streams.
• Govern automation framework versioning, dependency management, and technical debt, ensuring the automation estate remains maintainable, extensible, and free of flaky or obsolete tests.
• Define automation coverage targets by platform and delivery stream, tracking progress and reporting automation maturity to the GM, Digital Operations & Quality.
• Introduce AI-assisted testing where relevant (e.g. test generation and regression triage) to improve efficiency and coverage. Define acceptance criteria standards and BDD/TDD framework guidance, enabling product and engineering teams to embed testability into requirements from the outset.
• Ensure testing standards align with security, data governance (PDPL), and accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA).

• Lead all test planning and execution across functional, regression, integration, API, and exploratory test cycles for all active delivery streams, ensuring test cycles are resourced and completed within release timelines.
• Own the full defect lifecycle: initial triage and severity classification, prioritization and resolution accountability, regression verification, root-cause analysis for critical defects, and systematic prevention of recurring production escapes.
• Enforce quality gate compliance within CI/CD pipelines, ensuring no release progresses to production without meeting defined coverage thresholds and defect resolution criteria.
• Produce release testing sign-off reports, documenting test coverage, open defects, residual risks, and formal go/no-go recommendation for each production deployment.
• Coordinate test execution resource planning across multiple parallel delivery streams, balancing capacity against release priorities and escalating resourcing risks in advance.
• Lead post-release defect retrospectives, identifying systemic testing gaps and driving targeted improvements.
• Support quality audits by providing testing evidence and implementing corrective actions.

• Own the full performance testing program: defining and governing load profiles, stress scenarios, and response time thresholds for critical digital platforms including the booking engine, check-in journeys, loyalty portal, and API gateway.
• Lead performance test execution ahead of major releases, peak season campaigns (Hajj, Ramadan, major promotions), and significant platform changes — producing evidence-based performance sign-off reports.
• Own DAST / SAST execution cycles in coordination with cybersecurity — including scheduling, finding triage, remediation tracking, and closure verification.
• Govern accessibility testing execution, ensuring digital platforms are…