Lead QA & Test Manager

A leading financial institution is seeking an experienced Lead QA & Test Manager to establish and lead a rigorous Quality Assurance and testing framework for a major analytics and data modernisation programme.

The successful candidate will be responsible for designing and executing a comprehensive testing strategy across approximately 2,200 complex financial and analytical reports, with a strong focus on data integrity, reconciliation, functional accuracy, performance, and regression testing.

A key objective of the role will be to provide demonstrable assurance that migrated reports maintain data accuracy, business logic, formatting, and functionality, with no material data drift between the legacy and target environments.

• Define and own the overall Quality Assurance and Test Strategy for the reporting and data migration programme.
• Design comprehensive test approaches covering functional, integration, regression, data reconciliation, performance, and user acceptance testing.
• Develop and oversee an exhaustive source-to-target data reconciliation strategy for approximately 2,200 analytical reports.
• Coordinate detailed, cell-by-cell reconciliation and validation of financial and analytical reports to identify data discrepancies and logic drift.
• Establish automated and manual data validation processes to provide evidence of data integrity following migration.
• Define test coverage, test scenarios, test cases, entry/exit criteria, and quality gates across the programme.
• Coordinate concurrency, stress, and load testing using Apache JMeter to simulate peak business workloads.
• Validate application and reporting performance under expected and peak-load conditions.
• Work closely with technical teams to assess the impact of JVM tuning, middleware configuration, database performance, and infrastructure capacity on reporting performance.
• Configure and administer the programme's defect tracking and management processes, using platforms such as Jira or ALM.
• Chair daily defect triage sessions and coordinate prioritisation, ownership, escalation, and resolution.
• Monitor engineering remediation against agreed defect resolution SLAs.
• Provide detailed reporting on test progress, defect trends, quality metrics, risks, and outstanding issues.
• Develop formal User Acceptance Testing (UAT) scripts mapped directly to critical business processes and reporting requirements.
• Coordinate UAT execution with business stakeholders and facilitate the transition of testing ownership to designated business data owners.
• Ensure appropriate evidence, approvals, and sign-offs are maintained throughout the testing lifecycle.
• Identify quality risks early and implement appropriate mitigation strategies.
• Provide regular quality status updates to programme and project leadership.
• Ensure testing activities align with enterprise governance, audit, risk, and regulatory requirements.

• 8+ years of experience in QA and Test Management, with a strong focus on:
  • Data Warehousing
  • Business Intelligence (BI)
  • Enterprise Reporting
  • ETL/ELT
  • Data Migration
  • Complex Analytics Platforms
• Proven experience leading QA and testing programmes within large-scale enterprise environments.
• Strong experience designing and implementing data reconciliation and validation frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience validating complex financial, analytical, or regulatory reports.
• Strong understanding of source-to-target reconciliation and data integrity testing.
• Experience with automated and manual testing approaches for large-scale data migration programmes.
• Proven experience managing enterprise defect lifecycles, including defect triage, prioritisation, escalation, and SLA tracking.
• Strong experience with non-functional testing, including performance, stress, concurrency, and load testing.
• Practical experience with Apache JMeter or comparable performance testing tools.
• Experience developing and managing formal UAT strategies, scripts, and execution plans.
• Strong understanding of ETL/ELT processes, data warehouses, BI reporting environments, and data migration methodologies.
• Experience working with business stakeholders and data owners to achieve formal testing sign-off.
• Strong reporting, governance, documentation, and stakeholder management capabilities.
• Experience within financial services or other highly regulated environments is highly advantageous.

Key Technical Skills

Essential:

• QA & Test Management
• Data Warehouse Testing
• BI / Reporting Testing
• Data Migration Testing
• Source-to-Target Reconciliation
• Data Validation
• Automated Test Frameworks
• Manual Testing
• Regression Testing
• UAT Management
• Defect Lifecycle Management
• Jira / ALM
• Apache JMeter
• Performance Testing
• Load & Stress Testing
• Concurrency Testing
• ETL/ELT Testing
• Financial Reporting Validation

• Preferred Certification

• ISTQB Certified Tester – Advanced Level, Test Manager

• Additional ISTQB, Agile Testing, performance testing, or data-related certifications will be advantageous.