QA Engineer Lead

Location: Bellville

Who are we?

Sanlam Life and Savings (SLS) is focused on serving our retail and corporate clients in South Africa and further developing our strategic advantages in the South African market. Sanlam Life and Savings consists of the following business units Retail Mass, Corporate, Risk and Savings, Glacier and various business enabling functions. The Sanlam Life and Savings Office provides strategic direction, coordination and support to the four clusters, as well as performing governance oversight that includes assurance provided by second line of defense functions in SLS, to enable us to meet our business objectives.

What will you do?

Job Purpose:

To transform software quality at Sanlam by building a modern, enterprise‑wide Quality Engineering capability that replaces manual testing with automation‑first, continuous quality practices. The role establishes a cluster‑wide Testing Guild, and applies cloud‑native, data‑ and AI‑assisted quality insights to accelerate delivery, improve platform resilience, and strengthen regulatory assurance - starting with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM).

Role Requirements:

Output/Core Tasks:

Quality Engineering Strategy & Governance

* Define and lead Sanlam's enterprise Quality Engineering (QE) strategy, setting standards, patterns and quality gates across the software delivery lifecycle

* Establish a cluster‑wide QE Guild to drive consistency, reuse, and skills uplift across CIO portfolios and product teams.

* Embed risk‑based quality governance, ensuring testing depth and evidence are proportionate to business, regulatory, and operational risk.

* Partner with Architecture, Security, Risk, and Compliance to ensure quality practices support regulatory assurance and audit readiness.

Automation‑First & Continuous Testing

* Drive the shift from manual testing to automation‑first, continuous quality practices embedded in CI/CD pipelines.

* Define and standardise test automation approaches across API, UI, integration, performance, security, and regression testing.

* Ensure testing is self‑service and developer‑enabled, with clear quality gates aligned to release and go/no‑go decisions.

* Improve key flow and reliability outcomes (e.g. defect escape, change failure rate, lead time for change).

* Institutionalize continuous testing practices (quality gates, dashboards, evidence, and test data strategies) to reduce time-to-market and incident risk.

Platform & Cloud‑Native Quality (Dynamics 365 Focus)

* Establish testing blueprints and standards for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM), including:

o Customisations and configurations

o Integration and API testing

o Security, role‑based access, and data integrity

o Regression and release validation

* Define environment and test‑data strategies to support cloud‑native and integration‑heavy architectures, including service virtualisation where required.

* Provide hands‑on quality leadership for priority CRM releases and programmes.

Data‑ and AI‑Assisted Quality Insights

* Introduce data‑driven quality analytics to provide visibility into release readiness, risk, and quality trends.

* Apply AI‑assisted testing techniques (e.g. customizations, integrations, security/roles, data quality, regression packs) with clear guardrails, change control, and auditability; start with lowrisk domains and scale as maturity grows.

* Stand up quality analytics (flow metrics, defect economics, predictive risk signals) to inform release decisions and leadership reporting.

* Translate quality signals into actionable insights for engineering leaders and CIO forums.

Capability Build & Operating Model

* Build and mature a QE Guild, including service offerings, standards, enablement, and communities of practice.

* Reduce reliance on external contractors by uplifting internal QE capability across squads and platforms.

* Define role profiles, learning paths, and career progression for QE, Software Development Engineer in Test, and automation engineers.

* Coach and influence engineering teams to treat quality as a shared responsibility, not a downstream activity.

Delivery Oversight & Risk Management

* Provide program level QA leadership for priority releases (esp. Dynamics CRM), ensuring coverage…