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QA Lead
People, process and predictability alongside a still-technical hand on the framework.
Starting level: Senior QA EngineerTarget role: QA LeadJourney: 9–12 months
Core skills
- Estimation and release planning
- Team structure, onboarding and skills matrices
- Process design: entry/exit criteria, definition of done
- Stakeholder communication and escalation
- Metrics that drive behaviour, not vanity numbers
Recommended technologies
- Jira and test management tooling
- CI/CD governance
- Reporting and dashboarding tools
Practice labs
- Build a release readiness checklist for your product
- Run a retrospective and convert it into three tracked actions
Projects
- A documented quality process for a squad, from grooming to post-release review
Interview preparation
- How you handle a missed defect that reached production
- Balancing automation investment against delivery pressure
- Growing a junior engineer to independence
Suggested next step
- Quality Manager or Head of Quality Engineering
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