Manager - Testing

The Senior Test Manager will be the most senior testing leader in the India team, responsible for establishing and leading the testing function, managing a team of Actuarial Testers, defining the end-to-end testing strategy, enforcing quality governance, and acting as the primary India testing contact for global stakeholders. This is primarily a people leadership and test governance role, requiring strong expertise in data-heavy testing, SQL-based validation, release management, and quality assurance within a regulated environment.
The ideal candidate is a strong people leader and Test Manager, rather than purely a hands-on tester. They should be highly governance-focused, comfortable managing audit and compliance requirements, and capable of taking ownership of release quality. They must also be data-literate, comfortable validating large datasets and numerical outputs using SQL, and able to lead testing for complex data pipelines and cloud migration programmes.
The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:
People Management and Leadership:
Directly manage, mentor, develop, and performance-manage a team of Actuarial Testers in Hyderabad.
Build and strengthen the testing capability through hiring, onboarding, capability development, and workforce planning.
Set team quality standards, manage workloads, conduct regular one-to-ones and performance reviews.
Coordinate testing activities across global and geo-dispersed teams.
Identify resource gaps and maintain staffing plans aligned with sprint and release cycles.
Test Strategy, Governance and Release Management:
Define and own the end-to-end Test Strategy covering SIT, UAT, regression, and release testing.
Establish and enforce strong quality governance, audit trails, documentation, and testing standards.
Maintain complete traceability from requirements through test cases, defects, and closure.
Define and track key metrics including execution progress, defect density, defect ageing, test coverage, and regression pass rates.
Provide structured, data-driven test status reporting to senior stakeholders.
Own release readiness and provide evidence-based go/no-go recommendations.
Identify risks early, escalate proactively, and ensure deviations are formally documented with appropriate risk sign-off.
Drive lessons learned and continuous improvement after major releases.
Data Testing and Technical Oversight:
Own the testing approach for data-heavy actuarial calculation and reporting pipelines.
Ensure numerical accuracy, data integrity, transformation correctness, and pipeline equivalence.
Define and manage test datasets for actuarial calculation scenarios.
Oversee advanced SQL-based data validation, calculation verification, and defect investigation.
Ensure testing covers scenarios such as null handling, schema evolution, late-arriving data, backfills, and partition logic.
Lead testing for cloud migration programmes, validating data integrity and calculation accuracy across environments.
Continuously improve automation and regression testing coverage using modern testing and scripting frameworks.
Stakeholder Management:
Act as the primary India testing contact for Product Owners, architects, Release Managers, and global delivery teams.
Align testing milestones with sprint and release schedules.
Provide honest, evidence-backed assessments of release quality and readiness.
Support audit and regulatory reviews by maintaining complete test evidence packs.
Collaborate with global Test Managers to share best practices and lessons learned.
Requirements:
8+ years of software testing/QA experience.
At least 3-5 years of Test Management experience, including direct people management.
Experience leading end-to-end testing programmes in financial services or other regulated environments.
Strong expertise in data testing, pipeline validation, and numerical/calculation validation.
Advanced SQL skills for test data preparation, validation, defect investigation, and result verification.
Strong experience in test governance, audit trails, compliance, and test evidence management.
Proven people leadership, including performance management and team development.
Experience working with global, geo-dispersed teams across multiple time zones.
ISTQB CTAL-TM (Test Manager) certification or equivalent.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including presenting test status and go/no-go recommendations to senior stakeholders.
Preferred Skills:
Databricks, Delta Lake, Azure Data Factory, and Azure DevOps.
Azure and/or AWS cloud platforms.
Python for test automation, data comparison, and regression validation.
Experience with cloud-to-cloud migrations or large-scale data platform transformations.
Exposure to actuarial platforms, IFRS 17 and Solvency II.
Familiarity with AI-assisted testing approaches.
Technical Skills:
Azure DevOps / Azure Test Plans - test management, defect tracking, pipeline monitoring, and release management.
Advanced SQL - data validation and calculation verification.
Cloud data platforms - Databricks, Delta Lake, data transformation and validation.
Python - automation and regression/data comparison.
Azure and/or AWS.
Test metrics, reporting, dashboards, and quality governance tools.

Experience
11-15 yrs