QA Test Lead

Job Title: QA Test LeadContract Duration: 8 months, possible extensionLocation: Columbus, OHWork Arrangement: OnsitePay Rate: $45-47/hourSummary The QA Lead will plan, coordinate, govern, and report the end-to-end testing effort for enterprise applications and integrations. The role must bridge business requirements and technical validation, supervise other testers, ensure measurable requirements traceability, and provide management with clear release-readiness information. The QA Lead must also be capable of reviewing and writing automation code when needed.ResponsibilitiesTest Leadership and Governance

• Act as Test Lead for assigned programs, releases, modules, and production-readiness efforts.
• Develop the overall test strategy, scope, entry/exit criteria, estimates, schedules, dependencies, and execution plan.
• Assign and supervise testing work, review test artifacts, mentor testers, and enforce QA standards.
• Coordinate with Business Analysts, Developers, Product Owners, Project Managers, DevOps, DBAs, and business stakeholders.

Requirements Analysis and Coverage

• Review BRDs, Functional Requirements (FRs), user stories, acceptance criteria, workflow diagrams, interface specifications, data mappings, and API specifications.
• Identify missing, ambiguous, conflicting, or untestable requirements before execution begins.
• Translate requirements into Test Scenarios (TS), Test Cases (TC), test data, preconditions, expected results, and automation candidates.
• Drive complete, measurable traceability from requirements to executed tests and defects.

Azure DevOps Test Plans

• Create and maintain Test Plans, Test Suites, Test Cases, configurations, test runs, evidence, and defect links in Azure DevOps (ADO).
• Establish consistent work-item relationships among BRDs/FRs, TSs, TCs, executions, defects, retests, and closure.
• Use ADO queries and dashboards to communicate progress, blockers, defects, coverage, and release readiness.

Test Design and Execution

• Create and review Positive, Negative, Boundary Value, Equivalence Partitioning, Decision Table, State Transition, Role/Authorization, Data-Driven, and Risk-Based tests.
• Coordinate and participate in Smoke, Functional, API, Integration, System, Regression, End-to-End, UAT, Performance-support, Database, and Data Pipeline testing.
• Ensure failures are reproducible, evidence is complete, and test results are defensible.

Defect and Release Management

• Lead or participate in defect triage and severity/priority decisions.
• Ensure defects contain environment/build information, reproducible steps, expected/actual results, evidence, and requirement/test links.
• Provide evidence-based release recommendations and clearly communicate residual quality risk.

Required Skills

• 7 years of QA/testing experience in enterprise software environments
• 2 years in a QA Lead, Test Lead, or senior QA role with formal leadership responsibility.
• Extensive hands-on Playwright or Selenium automation experience; Playwright + TypeScript strongly preferred
• Strong BRD/FR analysis, RTM design, requirements traceability, and coverage-management experience.
• Strong API testing and SQL/database validation experience.
• Experience supervising testers, reviewing test artifacts, leading defect triage, and reporting to management.
• Experience with Git, code review, CI/CD, and modern software delivery practices.
• Data pipeline / ETL validation experience.

Preferred Skills

• Playwright + TypeScript framework design and migration experience from Selenium.
• Experience creating reusable fixtur· Experience with reusable fixtures, APIes, Page Objects, API clients, test-data factories, and custom reporting.EE
• Performance-testing exposure and ability to coordinate specialized performance or security testing.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience

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