What are the responsibilities and job description for the QA Manager position at Akoya?
The Role
We're looking for a hands-on, strategic QA Manager to lead, innovate, and grow our QA function as we expand our product offerings. This role combines technical leadership with strong relationship-building across engineering and product teams. As a central figure in our QA organization, you'll lead a team of 5-10 QA engineers and manual testers, collaborating closely with engineering leads, Product Managers, and other senior stakeholders to build a quality-driven, efficient, and compliant testing strategy.
The ideal candidate embodies a collaborative, ownership-driven mindset and is proactive in solving challenges. They will balance hands-on testing with team leadership, and play a key role in implementing processes that enable fast, reliable releases and align with our business goals.
Key Responsibilities
This remote position is only available to individuals living in the greater Boston, MA, New York City, NY and Raleigh, NC areas. Candidates who do not live within these areas will not be considered for this role.
We're looking for a hands-on, strategic QA Manager to lead, innovate, and grow our QA function as we expand our product offerings. This role combines technical leadership with strong relationship-building across engineering and product teams. As a central figure in our QA organization, you'll lead a team of 5-10 QA engineers and manual testers, collaborating closely with engineering leads, Product Managers, and other senior stakeholders to build a quality-driven, efficient, and compliant testing strategy.
The ideal candidate embodies a collaborative, ownership-driven mindset and is proactive in solving challenges. They will balance hands-on testing with team leadership, and play a key role in implementing processes that enable fast, reliable releases and align with our business goals.
Key Responsibilities
- Team Leadership and Development: Manage, mentor, and develop a QA team of 5-10, fostering a culture of collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement. Upskill team members in automation and business-aligned testing practices to maximize the team's impact.
- Stakeholder Management: Build and maintain strong relationships with engineering leads, Product Managers, and senior leadership. Act as a trusted partner who understands and aligns QA efforts with the broader goals of each team, while ensuring the QA function remains cohesive and centralized.
- Process Innovation: Develop and implement adaptive QA processes that support rapid iteration and scalability. Champion best practices for manual and automated testing, and adapt processes to meet the evolving needs of cross-functional teams.
- Drive Automation and Efficiency: Lead the automation strategy, prioritizing high-impact areas for coverage and efficiency using tools such as Cypress, Bitbucket pipelines and Docker . Ensure high reliability and speed in automation execution to support rapid delivery.
- Business and Compliance Alignment: Establish QA practices that align with regulatory standards (e.g., CFPB 1033 compliance) and business needs. Collaborate with Product and other stakeholders to ensure QA efforts support core business goals.
- Experience: 7 years in software testing or QA, with at least 3 years in a leadership role. Experience in high-growth, agile environments and a centralized but embedded team structure is highly valued.
- Technical Skills: Proficiency with Cypress, Docker, Bitbucket pipelines, K8s, AWS CodeDeploy, Postman, and WireMock. Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, cloud environments, and shift-left testing practices is essential.
- Stakeholder and Leadership Skills: Strong interpersonal skills with experience managing relationships across engineering, product, and senior leadership. Ability to align QA efforts with cross-functional goals while maintaining a cohesive, centralized QA function.
- Values-Driven Leadership: Demonstrated collaborative, ownership-driven approach with a bias to action. Proven ability to lead by example and foster these values within the QA team.
- Analytical and Metrics-Driven: Strong analytical skills with a focus on data-driven improvements in QA performance and efficiency.
- Automation Reliability, Speed, and Coverage: Deliver reliable, fast test automation that achieves targeted coverage, reducing reliance on manual testing.
- Team Efficiency: Drive team efficiency by streamlining processes, minimizing bottlenecks, and enabling faster feedback loops within development cycles.
- Stakeholder Satisfaction: Foster strong cross-functional relationships and align QA with the needs and goals of each team.
- Compliance and Quality: Maintain low bug escape rates, high test pass rates, and a testing framework that supports compliance and quality standards.
This remote position is only available to individuals living in the greater Boston, MA, New York City, NY and Raleigh, NC areas. Candidates who do not live within these areas will not be considered for this role.
