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.