Quality Assurance Lead - Release Engineer

What You'll Do

You will own the quality function end-to-end across SaaS, mobile apps, and IoT devices/gateways. You’ll design the QA strategy, processes, and tooling, lead execution (hands-on + vendor/contract coordination), and run release governance—from feature verification through systems integration, regression, and production readiness. You’ll partner with product and vertical engineering teams to deliver predictable, low-risk releases.

Top Outcomes (Your first 12 months)

• A documented QA strategy with entry/exit criteria per environment.
• Release governance (change calendar, go/no-go) adopted org-wide.
• Automation coverage baselined and >X% growth (UI/API/device firmware).
• Defect escape rate ↓, MTTR ↓, change fail rate ↓, on-time releases ↑ (DORA-style).

Role Responsibilities - How You Will Make an Impact

Process & Governance

• Establish/own defect lifecycle, test plans, test reporting, and release readiness criteria (RfR/Release Queue).  Publish release notes and list of known issues.
• Define system integration testing (SIT) and end-to-end regression across cloud, mobile (Android), and device firmware.
• Run go/no-go calls; maintain the Forward Schedule of Change; ensure roll-back and telemetry are in place.

Test Strategy & Execution

• Create risk-based test plans; balance automation vs. exploratory testing.
• Stand up automation frameworks (API, web, mobile, hardware-in-the-loop) and CI hooks for gates.
• Own device test rigs (benchtop, HIL, OTA, environmental/smoke) and mobile device farms.

Tooling & Data

• Select and manage test management, result analytics, defect tracking, and release dashboards.
• Define quality KPIs; publish release health and trend reports.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Partner with Eng/Product/Sec to define release trains and feature-flag strategies.
• Mentor developers on testability; coordinate external QA vendors when needed.

Relevant Skills and Experience

• 6–10+ years in QA; 3+ years building QA processes across multiple surfaces (web, mobile, devices).
• Demonstrated ownership of SIT + regression programs and formal release gates.
• Hands-on with at least two: Playwright/Cypress, Appium/XCUITest/Espresso, pytest/Robot, hardware-in-the-loop frameworks.
• Experience with CI (GitHub Actions/GitLab/Jenkins), artifact versioning, and feature flags.
• Comfortable testing BLE/Wi-Fi/LTE device flows, OTA updates, and cloud APIs.
• Strong defect taxonomy, risk analysis, and root-cause habits.
• Safely operate firearms platforms under supervision from trained and licensed range officers and qualified ARC personnel. Prior experience with firearms is not required.
• This position may require travel up to 10% of the time in support of in-person events including system testing.  

Bonus Points

• IoT security testing basics (certificates, mutual TLS, FIPS modules).
• Mobile MDM/UEM exposure; app store vetting.
• Observability: logs/metrics/traces; synthetic monitoring.
• Regulated/DoD or ISO 27001/SOC 2 environments; RMF familiarity.