Address
Form of workDirector, IT Quality
Summary
The Head of Quality Engineering will play a key leadership role on the IT Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) team. This role leads the Quality Engineering Center of Excellence (QECoE), which is responsible for the overall defining, implementing, and monitoring of National Life Group’s (NLG’s) enterprise quality standards.
This position operates with a high degree of independence and thought leadership, collaborating with business unit, IT leaders, and IT vendors to deliver projects and systems that meet NLG’s enterprise quality standards. In addition, this position is responsible for ensuring the performance of QE Leads in the QECoE, including coaching and mentoring, and performance evaluation through regular feedback sessions, in accordance with NLG’s standards and processes.
This position is responsible for ensuring that NLG QE frameworks and tools are adopted, and for the identification, evaluation, and implementation of new frameworks, technologies, and techniques in support of enterprise quality standards, as well as for advancing NLG’s Culture of Quality.
Collaboration with other IT and business leaders is critical to the success of the QECoE, ensuring teams have input on enterprise quality standards, and can support them, and that business objectives are met with the requisite level of quality. This role will be a direct report to the Vice President of Applications within the National Life IT organization and will be based either in Dallas (Addison), TX or Montpelier, VT.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide overall QECoE leadership, mentoring and coaching QE Leads, vendor resources and NLG employees on enterprise quality standards, frameworks, and industry best practices.
- Collaborate with business and IT leaders to understand business and technical goals and objectives. Using this knowledge, define and achieve support for enterprise quality standards and a strategy to achieve those standards.
- “Roll up your sleeves” and deeply understand all enterprise projects. Participate from inception in order to connect the portfolio and play a key role in delivery
- Drive automation where possible to lower delivery timelines and improve quality
- Drive quality standards across multiple development methodologies and platforms (waterfall, agile and DevOps and development platforms including mainframe, open systems and cloud)
- Liaison with developers and business and lead the selection of tools, processes and talent for quality
- Advise and influence senior and executive leadership on all software quality matters
- Drive continuous improvement in QE performance by providing ongoing and regular performance metric reporting as compared to NLG quality standards & best practices.
- Actively lead and manage vendors, both software and resource providers, to ensure compliance with National Life Group’s enterprise quality standards and expectations.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences, or related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience
- 5-7 years of demonstrated, progressive leadership roles within Quality Assurance or Quality Engineering
- Advanced certification from a nationally recognized entity such as ASTQB or QAI preferred
- Strong QE knowledge and skills, with ability to lead teams through complex initiatives
- Life & Annuity insurance industry experience desired
- Experience working in an ITIL process environment
- Experience working with and managing IT outsourced vendors with strong ability to effectively lead and manage remote and offshore teams
- Must be a self-starter and be able to work independently as well as being a team player
- Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills
- Ability to think creatively and to drive innovation
- Strong situational analysis and decision-making abilities
- Ability to work collaborative across business units and IT customers
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment; strong organizational skills a must
#LI-CS
#LI-Hybrid
