Technical Lead — QA Automation

TEGNA Inc. (NYSE: TGNA) helps people thrive in their local communities by providing the trusted local news and services that matter most. With 64 television stations in 51 U.S. markets, TEGNA reaches more than 100 million people monthly across the web, mobile apps, streaming, and linear television. Together, we are building a sustainable future for local news.

We’re looking for a Technical Lead of QA Automation to own the technical direction, standards, and frameworks that power test automation across our engineering organization. In this role, you’ll be the technical authority on how we automate quality across web, native mobile, connected TV, and backend platforms, working hands on to design, build, and scale automation solutions while guiding engineering teams toward an automation‑first delivery model.

This role reports to the QA Team Lead and leads through technical influence rather than people management. You’ll partner with development pods, platform teams, and engineering leadership to ensure quality is built into every stage of delivery, not added at the end. You’ll shape how automation integrates into our sprint flow, CI/CD pipelines, and release process, directly improving release confidence and reducing manual effort across the organization.

Our automation strategy is built around native, platform‑aligned tooling:
Playwright with Type Script for web, Espresso (Kotlin) for Android, and XCUITest (Swift) for iOS/tvOS. You’ll own the continued evolution and adoption of these frameworks, ensuring they scale with our growing platform footprint.

This is a hybrid position based in Knoxville, TN, with regular collaboration across mobile, web, backend, CTV, and infrastructure teams.

• Own the technical direction and standards for test automation across all platforms: web, iOS, Android, CTV, and backend services
• Lead the native automation strategy:
  Playwright with Type Script for web, Espresso with Kotlin for Android, and XCUITest with Swift for iOS and tvOS
• Define and enforce automation patterns, framework architecture, and best practices across teams
• Drive adoption of auto‑waiting, built‑in synchronization, and native tooling capabilities to eliminate flaky tests and reduce maintenance overhead
• Evaluate and recommend tools, frameworks, and approaches that align with our platform‑native philosophy and reduce reliance on wrapper‑based abstractions

• Design, build, and maintain scalable automated test frameworks across platforms
• Implement and refine page object patterns, test data management, and parallel execution strategies
• Write and maintain automated tests that cover critical user journeys, regression paths, and edge cases
• Identify and eliminate flaky tests, reducing false negatives and increasing trust in CI/CD pipeline results

• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines via Git Hub Actions and Azure Dev Ops to support reliable, continuous releases
• Align automation execution with the team’s sprint operating model, supporting mid‑sprint QA handoffs and sprint lock discipline
• Ensure automation results provide fast, actionable feedback that enables developers to resolve issues within the same sprint cycle
• Partner with infrastructure teams on test environment stability, observability, and pipeline performance

• Champion a shift‑left testing culture where developers can read, write, and maintain automated tests alongside feature code
• Partner with development pods to improve testability, coverage, and automation effectiveness across their platforms
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to QA engineers and developers on automation best practices, framework usage, and test design
• Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to align quality strategy with delivery goals and platform priorities
• Provide visibility into automation coverage, quality risks, and release readiness across teams

• Extend automation strategy to cover CTV platforms including Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung, and LG, addressing…