QA Lead, IT​/Tech, IT QA Tester ​/ Automation

The Freeman Company is a global leader in events, on a mission to redefine live for a new era. With a data-driven approach and the industry’s largest network of experts, The Freeman Company's insights shape exhibitions, exhibits, and events that drive audiences to action. The integrated full-service solutions leverage a 99-year legacy in event management as well as new technologies to deliver moments that matter.

The QA Lead is a senior, cross-functional quality assurance role overseeing the Application QA group — who handle day-to-day testing, regression, and change validation for their application. This role ensures Application QA consistently follows established process and standards and serves as an escalation point. The QA Lead's other primary responsibility is leading priority and specialized testing — work that falls outside traditional application QA scope or supports new initiatives — either executing it personally or coordinating the right resources depending on scope.

The role also builds out the team's load/performance testing capability and champions the use of AI to accelerate test creation and other QA activities. The QA Lead reports directly to the QA Manager.

This position will support our Technology Services team. It is eligible to work a hybrid schedule, generally requiring work in-office and/or show-site 2-3 days per week. The ideal candidate will be based out of any of the following locations:

• Serve as the escalation point for the Application QA team — answering process questions, resolving ambiguity, and providing backfill coverage when team members are unavailable.
• Lead priority and specialized testing initiatives that fall outside traditional application QA scope — whether within an existing application or as part of a new initiative — either executing the work personally or coordinating the right resources depending on scope.
• Partner with QA team members to ensure testing standards, processes, and best practices are consistently understood and followed across all teams.
• Own one-off and ad hoc requests as they arise — either leading the effort by coordinating the right people, or performing the work directly, depending on scope and urgency.
• Evaluate proposed development solutions and technical designs to build a test strategy and approach, identifying high-risk areas and prioritizing test coverage accordingly.
• Work across multiple teams to extract and document how existing functionality works, break complex features into testable components, and coordinate cross-team execution and documentation of end-to-end testing results.
• Design, build, and execute load and performance testing plans to validate system scalability, reliability, and readiness for key events or releases (e.g., using tools such as JMeter).
• Utilize AI tools (e.g., Git Hub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to generate test cases, performance test scripts, and other QA artifacts, improving team efficiency and coverage.
• Hold and participate in regular knowledge-transfer sessions across teams to build shared understanding of integrated applications and reduce single-point-of-failure risk.
• Provide regular status updates and proactively elevate risks, blockers, or process gaps to the QA Manager.

• 5+ years of experience in software quality assurance / testing, including experience working across multiple applications or teams simultaneously.
• Demonstrated ability to design a test strategy and identify high-risk areas from a solution design or set of requirements.
• Experience designing and executing load/performance testing (e.g., with JMeter or a comparable tool).
• Experience using AI/LLM tools to generate or accelerate test cases, scripts, or other QA deliverables.
• Strong cross-team communication…