QA Lead

Job Title: QA Lead Reports to: Engineering Manager, SRE & QA Location: Ireland (remote) Purpose We are hiring a QA Lead who starts hands-on to run our QA team day to day. You will be embedded in one pod as a Quality Engineer, the same as the rest of the team, and you will also lead that team: three Quality Engineers report to you. You are the connection between the Engineering Manager and the QA team. The Engineering Manager sets quality strategy and direction. You turn it into day-to-day practice, feed the team's reality back up, and carry the operational load of goal setting, performance reviews, coaching, and reviewing your team's work. You stay hands-on and technical throughout. Most of your quality leverage is upstream. Our pods spec features in depth and hand them to coding agents that build the feature and its tests together. Inside your pod you are the advocate, not the executor: the voice asking the awkward questions, pushing the failure modes nobody thought of, and making sure the spec and our shared testing skills are good enough that the agent produces the right tests, at the right level, catching the right things. Expect to be hands-on early while that foundation is still thin. Expect that to reduce deliberately over time as the skills sharpen and the pod's own quality thinking matures. Key Responsibilities QA Team Leadership: Lead the three Quality Engineers who report to you. Set their goals, run their performance reviews, coach them day to day, and review their work. You are the senior voice they turn to on what good looks like and what to do next, and the first escalation point when they are stuck. Spec-Time Advocacy: Be in the room while the pod specs a feature, before any code exists. Ask the awkward questions, push the edge cases and failure modes nobody has thought of, and hold the line that acceptance criteria are testable and traceable. A vague spec produces vague tests, so this is where most of your quality leverage lives. Agentic Test Quality: Our coding agents write most of our tests. Curate what they are told: the shared testing skills, patterns, and guardrails that decide what gets tested, at what level, and how. Verify the output is load bearing using mutation testing, rather than assuming a green suite means a covered feature. Coaching & Culture: Focus on coaching over absorbing workload. Review the tests that arrive with a pull request, whether a developer or an agent wrote them, asking probing questions to ensure they prove meaningful outcomes. You raise the developers' ceiling by mentoring them on test efficacy. Fold Back and Compound: A lesson that only lands in one spec is a lesson we pay for twice. When something is missed, get the reasoning back into the shared skills, gates and patterns so the next feature starts better than the last. This is what makes the role shrink rather than grow: every fold-back reduces how much intervention the next feature needs from you. Hands-on When It Counts: Coach rather than cover. You still open the editor for exploratory testing, a missing test, a gnarly end-to-end flow, or awkward test data, but that is the exception rather than how you spend your week. Expect this to be heavier in your first months and lighter as the skills mature. That reduction is the point. Holistic Quality: Help the team integrate performance, security, and accessibility into our quality practices. You contribute to ensuring accessibility is asserted against our live shared config. The Person Technical Lead: You are comfortable in the code and review your team's work to ensure high standards. You lead by evidence, using traces, benchmarks, and reproduction scripts to help the team make decisions. Systemic Thinker: You look beyond individual bugs to identify pipeline or architectural failures. You contribute to engineering systemic solutions that prevent recurrence. Evidence-Based Guide: You help the team understand success through metrics like mutation scores, flake rates, and production escapes, using this data to guide improvements. Collaborative Influencer: You thrive in cross-functional pods, partnering with product managers and engineers to embed quality into the development lifecycle. Proactive Partner: You champion the user perspective by questioning assumptions and identifying potential failure modes before development begins. Skills and Qualifications 5+ years of software testing experience in a commercial environment with 3+ years acting as a technical lead in QA teams. B.S. in Computer Science, Software Engineering or equivalent lifetime experience. Formal leadership experience, including performance management of a team. Experience in architectural and pipeline design to prevent systemic failures. Hands-on experience building with agentic tools and workflows, focusing on prompt engineering and LLM-based testing frameworks. Proficiency in performance, security, and accessibility testing. Experience working with modern CI/CD platforms and DevOps best practices. Proficiency in JIRA or similar project management tools. Expertise with automation tools like Cypress, Stryker, Allure, PactumJS, etc. Leadership & Competencies Quality Leadership: Proven experience in formal management, including goal setting, coaching, and performance reviews. You use data-driven insights—such as flake rates, escape rates, and mutation scores—to guide team decisions and improvements. Directing Coding Agents: Expertise in writing and refining instructions for AI coding agents. You have the judgment to identify where they fail and utilize mutation testing to ensure generated suites provide meaningful coverage. Collaborative Engineering: Strong advocate for shift-left practices. You mentor engineers in TDD and code review standards, thriving in a pairing environment to solve complex architectural challenges. Attributes for Success at Adherent Collaborative Mindset — Thrives in a team-oriented environment, values partnership, and demonstrates care and respect for colleagues to achieve shared goals. Transformational Thinking — Embraces change and actively contributes to driving innovation and cultural evolution within the organisation. Agility — Adapts quickly to shifting priorities and market demands, maintaining focus and effectiveness in a fast-paced environment. Empowerment — Takes ownership of decisions and actions, demonstrating confidence in making autonomous choices that align with company goals. Fearless Flexibility — Approaches challenges with an open mind, learns rapidly from setbacks, and adjusts strategies to navigate dynamic circumstances. Innovation-Driven — Leverages creativity and cutting-edge technology to develop solutions that simplify complex problems and create competitive advantages. Customer-Centric Focus — Obsess over delivering value to customers by understanding their needs and providing impactful solutions that build trust and loyalty. Trustworthiness — Acts with integrity, builds credibility through consistent actions, and fosters an environment where others feel respected and valued. Respect for Diversity — Values diverse perspectives, treats everyone with dignity, and cultivates an inclusive workplace that encourages new ideas and opinions. High-Energy Execution — Brings enthusiasm, drive, and focus to every task, ensuring timely delivery of impactful results. Continuous Learner — Stays current with industry trends, tools, and technologies while seeking opportunities for personal and professional growth. Results-Oriented Problem Solver — Tackles challenges with precision and determination, delivering measurable outcomes that align with company objectives. Visionary Contributor — Aligns personal goals with the company's mission to create a cleaner, safer, and better world while helping shape the organisation's future.