Director, IT Quality Assurance and Engineering

Summary

CHS has an exciting opportunity in the Information Technology group. We are looking for a Director, IT Quality Assurance and Engineering (QAE) to set the vision and strategy of the IT QAE Center of Excellence (CoE) to uphold and continually improve CHS’s IT Quality Assurance and Engineering testing standards and processes. This position supervises and mentors QAE leaders and their respective teams that certify applications and systems in support of CHS business operations. The Director, IT Quality Assurance and Engineering, along with the QAE leadership team ensures QAE and testing activities and deliverables are completed on time and on budget. This is a QAE and testing technology visionary and strategist who has a proven ability to continuously evaluate the goals of the company, needs of internal and external customers, and partner with the IT and Business leaders to provide overall direction on how to deliver products that meets or exceeds quality standards and financial accountabilities. The ideal candidate will showcase business acumen, process and operational mindset, troubleshooting skills, transformation/change management and significant personnel management experience. The Director, IT Quality Assurance and Engineering is considered the overall leader for QAE best practices and standards within the technology and service teams.

To be considered for this position, qualified candidates will ideally reside in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN surrounding area.

Responsibilities

Strategic Oversight and Execution

• Direct all Quality Assurance and Engineering (QAE) and Testing Center of Excellence (CoE) initiatives to ensure the IT project and product portfolio meets or exceeds quality standards.
• Lead the QA organization transformation, increase automation and set a QA maturity level aligned with business needs to achieve the long-term objectives of CHS.
• Set and execute the 5-year QAE strategy in alignment with overall business and IT objectives and goals.
• Implement and continually evolve the vision and roadmap for the QAE Department.
• Drive culture of innovation and collaboration to rapidly deliver high-quality products that delight users and achieve business results.
• Model a collaborative leadership style that emphasizes teamwork, values contributions, and encourages participation in achieving organizational goals.
• Oversee implementation and execution of testing strategies, including functional, performance, and automation testing frameworks.
• Ensure adoption of best practices for test automation across the organization.
• Maintain a continuous improvement mindset across all of QAE and IT.
• Ensuring QA philosophy and best practices are adopted and embraced within the IT operating model.

Team Management and Development

• Manage, mentor, and develop QAE Managers to execute the QAE strategy, vision and roadmap in connection with the overall IT Strategy.
• Oversee personnel management, including conflict resolution, allocation, scheduling, monitoring, motivation, and performance evaluation of the QAE Department.
• Facilitate QAE team meetings, provide training, and ensure QAE Managers are equipped with best practices.
• Lead through measurement by implementing dashboards, metrics, and key performance indicators to drive accountability and continuous improvement.
• Optimize the talent in the team through individual development planning, coaching and provide ongoing feedback and set performance goals.
• Build trust with QAE team, cross functional groups and business partners through consistent communications and clear expectations. Ensure business objectives are clearly understood by the team and stakeholders

Resource and Skill Allocation

• Collaborate with IT Directors, business stakeholders, and QAE Managers to identify required skill sets and deploy QAE resources across the IT Product and Project Portfolio.
• Ensure the right expertise is allocated to the right initiatives, optimizing quality and efficiency across projects.

Escalation and Risk Mitigation.

• Point of escalation for IT, business and QAE leaders in a matrixed organization, ensuring quality goals and project schedules are met.
• Provide oversight to mitigate risks impacting system quality, timelines, and stakeholder expectations.
• Oversee test execution for business applications, online platforms, document processing, and reporting deliverables.
• Ensure alignment with industry best practices in Quality Assurance and Engineering across various technology stacks and platforms.
• Report QAE metrics and testing status to CHS IT Leadership, ensuring transparency in quality assurance efforts.

Vendor and Budget Management

• Manage vendor relationships, including offshore outsourced managed services to maximize the effectiveness of supplied resources and tools within the CHS environment.
• Forecast and maintain the QAE budget, ensuring cost-effective quality assurance operations.

Minimum Qualifications (required)

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology or computer science (or equivalent years of experience, education and/or training)
• 7+ years of manual/automated software testing experience to include:
  • Analysis of requirements and design, translation of those to test requirements and test cases, test automation, execution of tests, reporting and mediation of defects and progress reporting
  • Leading and supervising enterprise QAE teams
  • Experience with both Agile and Waterfall project methodologies
  • Demonstrated ability to grow QAE practices in alignment of overall IT and company goals
  • Experience in preparing and implementing test strategies across different project methodologies
  • Thorough understanding of implementing and supporting defect management process
  • Experience proactively engaging with all areas of the business to ensure full end to end satisfaction of requirements is met
  • Prior experience working with vendors

Additional Qualifications

• Certified Test Manager (CTM or equivalent)
• LEAN Certification
• Experience in SAP and other ERP solutions in a development/deployment or support capacity
• Ability to understand functional and technical complexities of projects, programs and IT products
• Ability to outline the strategy and explain the test approach to the business and key IT stakeholders
• Knowledge and experience of resource management and budgeting
• Ability to build a testing team of professionals with appropriate skills, attitudes and motivation based on the project scope
• Manage forecast and budget
• Experience in managing employees, contractors and extended managed capacity
• Overall IT enterprise development and support aptitude
• Building relationships and team building
• Coaching and developing talent
• Strategic thinking and planning
• Ability to look for the win-win solution so that quality is not compromised
• Ability to think and solve problems independently within the guidelines of the position
• Identify priority items and organize work to complete those requests to meet deadlines

Pre-employment screening is based on the job requirements and industry guidelines and may or may not be required for the position. If required, selected candidates must pass pre-employment screenings to include all or a combination of drug, criminal, motor vehicle check, physical requirements and FMSCA Clearinghouse.