Siftstack
Head of Quality Engineering (QA)
1w ago
200000 –250000 USD / yearUSAHeadRemoteqaautomationtestingteam leadership
Lead quality engineering and QA strategy, build and manage QA team, implement testing practices for web, desktop, and backend systems.
Responsibilities
- Quality is a top priority for Sift, and we are building a formal QA discipline to match the standard our customers expect. This is our first dedicated quality leadership hire, and the person in this seat will own it end to end: the practices, the team, the tooling, and the accountability for what ships.
- You will define how Sift tests its products across web, desktop, and backend systems. You will build and lead a team that scales primarily through external QA vendors, supported over time by a small internal core. You will partner closely with product, design, and engineering to make quality a property of how we work rather than a step at the end. And you will be the single person who stakes their reputation on the quality of our releases.
- This is a builder's role with significant ambiguity. You will set strategy, stand up process from a near-blank slate, and decide where to apply manual testing, where to apply AI, and where to invest in automation.
- Own Sift's overall quality strategy and serve as the accountable owner for release quality sign-off across all customer-facing products.
- Build and lead the QA function, scaling to roughly 30 people. The majority will be outsourced testers managed through external vendors; internal headcount will start at zero and may grow to a small core of up to ten over time.
- Select, onboard, and manage external QA vendor teams (for example, Keywords-style partners), holding them to clear quality bars, throughput expectations, and SLAs.
- Establish formal test planning for every major feature and release, including regression suites, and enforce a QA pass on all user-facing products.
- Organize testing into embedded squad testing and dedicated release testing, with test leads coordinating coverage across squads and releases.
- Stand up structured customer bug intake, triage, and prioritization so that issues are caught, ranked, and resolved through a defined workflow rather than ad hoc.
- Apply AI to accelerate the function: drafting test plans, test cases, and documentation, and building internal tooling such as admin utilities to create test accounts and set up test conditions.
- Partner with engineering to expand automated testing over time, while continuing to invest in manual testing where human judgment matters most, especially for UX.
- Define and track quality metrics and service-level objectives, and report on them to engineering leadership and, when needed, directly to customers.
- Coach engineers on self-testing and help embed quality ownership across the product development lifecycle.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of experience in QA, with a track record of senior quality leadership and the scope and judgment expected of a principal-level or director-level owner.
- At least 3 years of experience managing people, including building and managing teams and developing test leads.
- Direct experience managing external or outsourced QA vendor teams and getting strong outcomes from them.
- Strong QA fundamentals: test planning, test case design, regression strategy, triage, and release management.
- Hands-on quality experience across frontend, with depth in web and ideally desktop, as well as backend systems.
- An AI-forward approach to QA, using modern tooling to accelerate test definition, documentation, and internal tool building, while knowing when manual testing is the right call.
- Highly organized, autonomous, and comfortable building structure in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to work with internal stakeholders and speak credibly with external customers.
- Experience in B2B. Extensive B2C experience will also be considered.
Nice to have
- Experience in aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomous systems, or another mission-critical or safety-relevant domain.
- Experience standing up a QA discipline from scratch at a growth-stage company.
- Familiarity with observability, telemetry, or large-scale data platforms.
Other
- Sift is the data infrastructure platform for hardware engineering teams. Sift turns high-frequency telemetry into engineering insights for mission-critical systems. Teams use Sift to build and operate rockets, satellites, autonomous vehicles, energy systems, defense platforms, and more.
- Founded by former SpaceX engineers who built the tools behind Dragon and Starlink, Sift is building the data infrastructure to herald the AI era for physical systems.
- Sift’s headquarters is in Marina Del Rey, CA (Next to LAX). We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays —and come together for a full week every two months. We are open to relocating candidates to LA or working from our San Francisco office for the right candidate.
- Salary range: $200,000 - $250,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.
- U.S. Person Required : Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) regulations.