Associate Director of Quality Engineering

Description

Overview:

HITRUST is seeking an Associate Director of Quality Engineering to lead and mature quality engineering practices across the HITRUST software platform ecosystem. This leader will transform the current QA function into an integrated, automation-first, and AI-enabled quality engineering discipline embedded across the software development lifecycle, ensuring reliable, high-quality software releases and strengthening trust in the HITRUST platform. The role operates within a complex platform environment supporting certification workflows, integrations, and evolving product capabilities.

This is not a traditional QA management role; it is a hands-on leadership position focused on building a modern quality engineering discipline that is fully integrated with software development and platform delivery. This role requires a hands-on leader who actively shapes and advances quality practices, while building the testing strategies required to support both legacy platforms and new platform development, balancing reliability, regression risk, and delivery velocity.

Working closely with the Senior Director of Development and Product Management, this role ensures quality engineering practices are embedded within sprint teams and development workflows. The role emphasizes shared accountability for delivery quality and release confidence, with a focus on building quality into the development lifecycle from the outset rather than validating it at the end. This includes supporting consistent quality practices across both legacy and emerging platform capabilities.

Duties & Responsibilities:

Quality Strategy and Transformation

• Define and implement a modern quality engineering strategy aligned with HITRUST’s product and platform roadmap.
• Define the overall testing strategy and automation architecture for the HITRUST platform, ensuring appropriate coverage across unit, integration, API, and end-to-end testing.
• Establish testing strategies that enable developers to own unit-level testing while Quality Engineering focuses on integration, system, and platform testing.
• Drive the continued evolution of QA from manual validation toward an automation-first quality engineering model.
• Introduce modern testing practices that improve release confidence while increasing engineering velocity.
• Promote shift-left quality practices that identify defects earlier in the development lifecycle and reduce downstream testing cycles.
• Ensure quality practices support both legacy systems and new platform development, balancing stability and innovation.
• Contribute hands-on to framework design, test coverage planning, and quality improvements

Engineering Partnership and Delivery Alignment

• Partner closely with the Senior Director of Development to embed Quality Engineers within sprint teams and development workflows.
• Ensure Quality Engineering participation in sprint planning, backlog refinement, and release planning.
• Align testing strategies with engineering architecture and development practices.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to validate integration points across platforms and systems early in the development lifecycle.
• Drive early integration and end-to-end testing to identify interoperability issues and reduce downstream risk.
• Partner with engineering leadership to co-own delivery quality, release confidence, and production stability across the platform ecosystem.
• Foster a culture where quality is a shared responsibility across engineering and Quality Engineering teams.
• Help define the appropriate distribution of testing responsibilities between developers and Quality Engineers to ensure efficient and scalable testing coverage.

Product Management Partnership and Customer Alignment

• Partner with Product Management to understand product requirements, use cases, and customer workflows, ensuring testing strategies reflect real-world usage.
• Validate end-to-end user journeys and critical workflows to ensure product quality meets customer expectations.
• Use product usage data and customer feedback to inform testing priorities and identify areas of quality risk.
• Collaborate with Product and Customer Success teams to surface and resolve quality issues impacting customer experience.
• Champion a customer-centric approach to quality by ensuring testing reflects how customers use the platform.

Test Automation and Tooling

• Design and implement scalable test automation frameworks that are tightly integrated into CI/CD pipelines and support continuous delivery.
• Improve automated test coverage across unit, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing.
• Evaluate and introduce AI-assisted testing tools where they improve test efficiency and coverage.
• Ensure testing infrastructure supports CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps workflows.

Release Quality and Risk Management

• Define release-readiness standards and quality gates that ensure predictable and stable software releases.
• Develop strategies to reduce regression risk for legacy platforms while enabling rapid delivery of new capabilities.
• Work with engineering leadership to identify and mitigate quality risks early in the development lifecycle.
• Support the launch of new platform capabilities with scalable testing approaches.

Quality Metrics and Continuous Improvement

• Establish and track quality metrics and dashboards, including defect escape rates, automation coverage, regression cycle time, and release stability.
• Use data-driven insights to continuously improve testing practices and software quality.
• Identify opportunities to shift defect detection earlier in the development lifecycle.

Team Leadership and Development

• Lead, coach and develop a small Quality Engineering team.
• Assess team capabilities and strengthen skills in automation, tooling, and modern quality engineering practices.
• Establish clear performance expectations, development paths, and accountability for the Quality Engineering organization.
• Build a culture of collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Balance team leadership with direct individual contribution on high-priority quality initiatives

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in software quality engineering or test engineering roles.
• Experience leading or transforming small QA teams in enterprise SaaS or platform environments.
• Hands-on experience building and scaling automated testing frameworks.
• Experience embedding Quality Engineering within Agile development environments.
• Strong collaboration skills and experience partnering closely with engineering leadership.
• Ability to balance people leadership with direct technical contribution

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with AI-assisted testing or modern testing tools.
• Experience in cybersecurity, assurance, compliance, or risk management technology environments.
• Experience supporting platform modernization or legacy-to-modern system transitions.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-based application architectures.

Leadership Profile:

• Player-coach who can lead a small team while remaining hands-on in quality strategy, automation, and release readiness
• Technical quality leader comfortable discussing automation, architecture, and testing strategy with engineers.
• Collaborative partner who works closely with development and product leadership to improve delivery outcomes.
• Data-driven operator who uses metrics and automation to continuously improve quality.

About HITRUST

HITRUST is the leader in validated cybersecurity assurance used in third-party risk management and compliance. HITRUST delivers assurance and certification programs for the application and independent validation of security, privacy, and AI controls, harmonized across more than 60 authoritative standards and frameworks. Its threat-adaptive approach combines tiered, selectable assessments (e1, i1, r2, and AI), an ecosystem of over 100 independent assessment firms, centralized quality assurance, standardized reporting, and a powerful SaaS platform to enable consistent, defensible, and scalable assurance. HITRUST delivers the only assurance certification with defensible proof of security, demonstrated by a 99.62% breach-free rate among certified environments in the 2026 Trust Report. For nearly 20 years, HITRUST has defined the standard for trustworthy cybersecurity proof, helping organizations demonstrate measurable cybersecurity resilience across their enterprises and third-party ecosystems.

HITRUST is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.