Team Lead, Software Test & Quality Assurance

The Software Test & Quality Assurance team serves both, and ensures release of verified and assured product. As Lead Engineer, Software Test & Quality Assurance, you will lead a team of Software Test & Automation Engineers working across both Hivemind Vision and Hivemind Solutions. You will turn the Australian software test strategy into day-to-day execution, set technical direction for test automation and infrastructure, and own the test evidence and release recommendations behind every software release. The team spans simulation, Software-in-the-Loop (SIL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL), Vehicle-in-the-Loop (VIL), perception and imagery validation, and live flight test. This is a hands-on leadership role. You will stay technically involved in framework design, test architecture, and complex integration issues while developing the people and capability of the team. You will report to the Senior Manager, Engineering (Systems Engineering and Test), and work closely with the Systems Engineering and Quality Process Engineering teams, as well as perception, autonomy, integration, flight test, program management, and Shield AI's international engineering teams.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Software Test & Automation Engineers and Quality Assurance Engineers, including hiring, onboarding, goal setting, performance feedback, and career development.

• Plan and prioritise test work across Hivemind Vision and Hivemind Solutions programs, balancing competing schedules and allocating people where they are most needed.

• Identify risks, delays, and resourcing constraints early and communicate them clearly to the Senior Manager, Engineering and to program stakeholders.

• Build a team culture of technical rigour, ownership, continuous improvement, and psychological safety. Test execution and release assurance ·

• Implement the Australian software test strategy shaped and endorsed by key stakeholders and leadership across unit, integration, simulation, SIL, HIL, VIL, and flight-test environments.

• Tailor test approaches to the needs of each team: perception, computer vision, and imagery validation for Hivemind Vision, and autonomy integration and platform validation for Hivemind Solutions.

• Own the software release process, including release readiness criteria, test evidence, approval matrices, and go / no-go recommendations.

• Work with Systems Engineering to maintain traceability from requirements and interface control documents (ICDs) through test cases to verification results.

• Prepare test readiness and verification evidence for formal technical reviews (e.g., TRR), customer acceptance, and airworthiness submissions.

• Develop and report software quality metrics, dashboards, and readiness assessments that give engineering and program leadership objective evidence of software maturity. Technical direction

• Set the technical direction for automated test frameworks, test harnesses, and validation tooling, with Python-based automation at the core.

• Drive integration of automated regression, integration, functional, and performance testing into CI/CD pipelines to enable continuous validation and rapid developer feedback and coordinate cross functionally with key stakeholders including DevOps.

• Guide the development of repeatable perception test approaches, including curated test datasets, ground-truth comparison, and performance benchmarking for computer vision and imaging-sensor capabilities.

• Guide the build-out and maintenance of test environments, including hardware setup, device flashing, SIL/HIL rigs, and cross-platform (Windows and Linux) environments.

• Lead or support cross-functional root cause investigations into defects and system integration issues, and make sure lessons learned feed back into process and test coverage.

• Coordinate operational and integration testing on flights in and around Melbourne with the flight test team. Process and governance

• Apply and help mature the Australian Engineering Management System (EMS) for software test and release, working with Quality Process Engineering on configuration management, defect management, and nonconformance and corrective action.

• Maintain a common, right-sized test and QA baseline across Hivemind Vision and Hivemind Solutions, while respecting the different needs of each team's products and customers.

• Contribute software test and QA content to proposals, statements of work, and test plans.

• Partner with Shield AI test and quality teams globally to share tooling, methods, and best practice.