Qa lead

We're the team behind the AI-powered customer engagement platform that's transforming how businesses connect with their customers - turning every conversation into a revenue-driving moment. Our platform helps contact centre teams achieve their goals through intelligent automation, predictive insights, and seamless customer experiences. We build technology that empowers people, not replaces them. ​We are proud of our reputation for combining cutting-edge tech with down-to-earth people, we have big ambitions and a clear sense of who we are. Our culture is driven by our values: we take ownership, move fast, challenge the status quo, and learn constantly. Working at MaxContact means being stretched, you’ll be trusted with responsibility early, expected to think commercially, and encouraged to act decisively. We don’t stand still, and neither will you. At the same time, we believe high performance only works in a safe, supportive environment. You’ll be surrounded by smart, driven people who want to see you succeed, who value openness and honesty, and who see mistakes as part of learning quickly and getting better. We're builders, problem-solvers, and customer champions who believe in innovation with purpose, human-first technology, and delivering results that matter. You'll work alongside passionate colleagues building technology that directly impacts how thousands of businesses connect with millions of customers every day.If you’re ambitious, curious, and excited by the idea of building something meaningful in a fast-moving tech business. We are looking for an ambitious and curious QA Lead to join our Technology department at a really exciting time. Role Purpose As QA Lead at MaxContact, you will be accountable for defining, owning, and continuously improving our overall quality assurance strategy across the mission-critical CCaaS platform, AI Agents, and Conversation Analytics products. You will provide hands-on quality leadership across the full software delivery lifecycle, combining strong test automation skills with broader QA disciplines including test planning, exploratory testing, release validation, defect management, and production quality monitoring. You will ensure that quality is embedded into every stage of delivery, not treated as a separate gate at the end. You will own and evolve our test automation frameworks while also establishing the wider QA practices, standards, and quality gates that give teams confidence to release safely and frequently. This spans deterministic systems such as CCaaS and non-deterministic AI capabilities such as LLM-driven workflows, analytics pipelines, and conversational agents. You will coach and influence engineering teams to take shared ownership of quality, using AI tools responsibly to improve test design, coverage, and efficiency, while defining how AI behaviour is validated safely and consistently in production systems. As a ​ leader within Engineering, you will work closely with engineering managers, technical leads, product managers, and platform teams to ensure quality is a first-class concern across the organisation, supporting both rapid delivery and high operational confidence in live customer environments. Key Responsibilities Quality Strategy and Leadership Own the end-to-end quality assurance strategy across CCaaS and supporting products, covering test planning, execution, automation, and production quality monitoring. Define and maintain quality standards, processes, and best practices that teams follow across the full delivery lifecycle. Lead test planning for sprints and releases, ensuring appropriate coverage across functional, regression, integration, and exploratory testing. Establish and manage defect triage processes, ensuring issues are prioritised by customer impact and systemic risk. Ensure QA investment is aligned to system risk, customer impact, and business priorities. Test Automation Strategy and Ownership Own the test automation strategy across unit, integration, end-to-end, and regression layers. Lead the design, implementation, and evolution of scalable automated test frameworks using C#, xUnit, Selenium, and Playwright. Drive consistency and reuse of automation frameworks, tooling, and approaches across teams. Set expectations for test code quality, structure, reliability, and maintainability. Ensure automated tests are stable, low-flakiness, and integrated into CI/CD pipelines for fast, trustworthy feedback. Own automation coverage for critical paths and high-risk scenarios, reflecting real-world contact centre usage and failure modes. Release Quality and Validation Own the release validation process, ensuring every release meets defined quality criteria before reaching production. Define and execute sprint release testing, combining automated regression with targeted exploratory and risk-based manual testing. Manage and coordinate system-level validation for cross-team changes, platform upgrades, and high-risk deployments. Ensure test evidence, traceability, and sign-off records are maintained for audit and compliance purposes. AI-Assisted Testing and Validation Define and lead approaches for testing non-deterministic AI systems, including prompt and output validation, dataset-driven evaluation, regression testing of AI behaviour, and guardrails and failure detection. Champion the responsible use of AI tools to support test generation, coverage analysis, and defect discovery, with appropriate review and validation. Define and implement quality controls for AI-generated code contributions, including detection of common AI-introduced anti-patterns, enhanced review checklists for AI-assisted PRs, and regression coverage expectations for agent-generated changes. Work with teams to ensure AI-enabled features are observable, testable, and production-ready, with clear evaluation and rollback strategies. CI/CD and Quality Gates Own the integration of automated testing into CI/CD pipelines across products. Define, implement, and continuously improve quality gates that balance delivery speed with production safety. Ensure fast feedback, clear reporting, and reliable execution of test suites. Partner with Platform teams to improve pipeline performance, scalability, and resilience. Reliability, Observability, and Production Confidence Proactively identify gaps in test coverage that could impact system reliability or customer experience, and drive improvements to close them. Ensure defects are reproducible and permanently covered by regression tests. Support incident investigations by providing QA insight, root cause analysis, and prevention strategies. Align testing approaches with observability practices such as logs, metrics, and traces to validate real-world behaviour. Leadership, Coaching, and Collaboration Act as the quality leader across delivery teams, embedding testability into design, refinement, and architectural discussions. Coach and mentor engineers on testing practices, automation frameworks, quality strategies, and AI-assisted testing techniques. Promote shared ownership of quality across Engineering, ensuring developers validate their own changes while QA provides strategic oversight and system-level assurance. Help define and evolve organisation-wide standards for QA, test automation, and AI-driven testing practices. Drive a culture of active AI tool experimentation and rapid workflow adaptation within the team. Evaluate emerging AI engineering capabilities and make pragmatic decisions about adoption. Values and Behaviours Customer Centric Ensure testing protects real customer journeys and live environments. Own It Take responsibility for quality outcomes, automation reliability, and production confidence. One Team Work collaboratively across Engineering, Product, and Platform to deliver high quality outcomes. Make It Count Focus on tests that reduce risk, improve reliability, and enable faster delivery. Challenge the Status Quo Continuously improve tooling, approaches, and the responsible use of AI in testing. Success Measures High-confidence test coverage across critical systems with a balanced mix of automated and targeted manual testing. Clear, consistent, and trusted QA standards and processes adopted across teams. Measurable reduction in production defects and escaped issues. Effective release validation process with clear quality criteria and sign-off. Effective validation strategies for deterministic services and AI-enabled features, with measurable improvements in team testing throughput, quality, and lead time through the adoption of AI-native testing workflows. Faster, safer releases supported by reliable quality gates and actionable reporting Training and Enablement As part of the role you will be required to constantly develop your skill set and take your personal growth seriously Structured onboarding with clear expectations for quality ownership. Dedicated time for learning automation frameworks, platform architecture, and AI testing practices. Budget for certifications and conferences. Collaboration with experienced engineers and technical leads. Regular 1:1s and career development support. Opportunities to contribute to testing strategy, tooling, and AI evaluation practices Skills and Experience Essential Strong commercial experience in quality assurance and test leadership, with hands-on automation skills using C#, xUnit, Selenium, and Playwright. Proven experience leading QA strategy across multiple teams and products, spanning test planning, manual testing, and automation. Deep understanding of testing approaches across unit, integration, and end-to-end layers, including risk-based investment decisions. Experience with defect management, release validation, and test reporting in fast-paced delivery environments. Experience embedding automation into CI/CD pipelines with a focus on speed, stability, and feedback. Ability to set standards for test quality and QA processes, and to drive adoption through coaching, reviews, and practical enablement. Strong analytical and debugging skills with a focus on root cause analysis and prevention. Experience working in Agile Scrum teams and influencing engineering practices across multiple teams. Comfortable using AI tools to support testing with appropriate validation and oversight. Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor, and influence engineers and testers. Desirable Experience testing AI or LLM-enabled systems, including evaluation, monitoring, and regression approaches. Familiarity with cloud-native architectures, containerisation, and distributed systems. Experience testing real-time or event-driven systems. Exposure to contact centre, CCaaS, or high-availability SaaS platforms. Awareness of emerging multi-agent development patterns and tools and interest in evaluating their applicability to team workflows. ISTQB or equivalent QA certification. Strong interest in AI-assisted testing, automation of QA workflows, and continuous improvement. Benefits and Perks 25 days annual leave plus your birthday off - So you can genuinely switch off, recharge, and bring your best self to work. Increased holiday entitlement with length of service - We recognise commitment and loyalty. As you grow with MaxContact, we give more back because owning it over time should be rewarded. Enhanced maternity and paternity packages -We support our people at every stage of life. By enabling families to take meaningful time when it matters most. Life insurance - Providing peace of mind for you and your loved ones reflects our commitment to doing the right thing and owning our responsibility to support our people beyond the workplace. Enhanced pension options- We help you invest in your future, not just your role today enabling you to make it count over the long term. Company-paid sick leave- We trust our people to take the time they need to recover and return well. Personal training allowance - We invest in your growth and encourage continuous learning. You’re empowered to develop your skills, challenge yourself, and challenge the status quo for your career and for our customers. Buy and sell holiday options- Flexibility matters. This option allows you to shape your working life around what’s important to you. Social, charity and culture committee events- We believe strong connections build great teams. These activities bring people together, support our communities, and reinforce our one team mindset. Hybrid working (minimum two days in the office)- We balance flexibility with collaboration. AI in Our Hiring Process AI in Our Hiring Process: At MaxContact, we expect engineers to work effectively with AI tools every day. We welcome candidates who use AI to prepare their applications and encourage you to demonstrate your ability to collaborate with AI during any take-home assessments. During live interviews, we will assess your ability to think through problems and make engineering decisions, both with and without AI assistance. We are a equal opportunities employer, if you require any adjustments throughout our hiring process, please contact [email protected]