QA Manager

A financial firm is looking for a QA Manager to join their team in Charlotte, NC. 

Compensation: $175-225k

Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the Quality Engineering strategy for Back Office applications supporting Fixed Income trading.

• Partner with Technology, Operations, Risk, and Compliance to align QA with business priorities and regulatory requirements.

• Build and manage a high-performing QE team across manual, automation, and performance testing disciplines.

• Establish QA governance frameworks with clear accountability, traceability, and reporting across all back office test cycles.

• Drive adoption of test management tools to ensure complete coverage and defect traceability.

• Define and enforce QE best practices, including test automation frameworks, regression coverage, and shift-left practices.

• Oversee end-to-end testing for settlements, reconciliations, clearing, payments, regulatory reporting (MiFID, TRACE, CFTC), and other post-trade processes.

• Ensure test coverage includes STP (straight-through-processing), fail/exception handling, SWIFT messaging, and integration with custodians/clearing houses.

• Expand performance, resilience, and failover testing for high-volume transaction flows.

• Drive automation strategy to increase regression efficiency, scalability, and accuracy across back office platforms (e.g., Calypso, Murex BO, or proprietary systems).

• Leverage modern test harnesses, CI/CD pipelines, and AI-driven test frameworks for smarter, faster, and more reliable validation.

• Define and maintain key quality metrics (defect leakage, automation coverage, cycle time, escape rate).

• Deliver executive-level reporting via dashboards (Power BI, Tableau, or equivalent).

• Implement continuous improvement loops to reduce production escapes and improve testing efficiency.

Qualifications:
Required:

• 12 years in Quality Assurance/Engineering, with at least 5 in a Director/Head of QE role in Capital Markets.

• Strong background in Fixed Income products (Govies, Corporates, Repos, Derivatives) and Back Office workflows (settlements, clearing, custody, payments).

• Demonstrated success in building QE functions in complex, regulated environments.

• Proven track record of implementing large-scale automation and QA governance frameworks.

• Deep knowledge of post-trade systems and integrations (e.g., Calypso, Murex, Client, Impact, GLOSS, DTCC, SWIFT).

• Strong expertise in test automation frameworks (Java/Python Selenium, Cypress, REST/SOAP service testing, performance tools like JMeter/LoadRunner).

• Familiarity with DevOps and CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab, Azure DevOps).

• Data validation skills (SQL, Excel, reconciliation tools).

• Exceptional leadership, mentoring, and communication skills.

• Ability to engage with Front Office, Back Office, Risk, Operations, and Regulators at senior levels.

• Strategic mindset with hands-on problem-solving capabilities.

Preferred: 

• Advanced degree (MBA, MS in Computer Science/Engineering, or Financial Engineering).

• Prior experience in a sell-side investment bank or hedge fund back office environment.

• Knowledge of regulatory frameworks (Dodd-Frank, MiFID II, CFTC, EMIR).

• Experience with AI/ML in test automation and predictive analytics for QA.