Quality Engineering Manager

Our Engineering Standards

Balance Speed and Quality

Engineers are expected to balance delivery speed with a strong commitment to quality, meeting agreed timelines while producing reliable, maintainable, and well-tested solutions. Sound judgment in making trade-offs between velocity and long-term sustainability is essential.

Collaborate Effectively

Engineering is collaborative by default. Team members are expected to contribute constructively in design discussions, reviews, and planning, communicate clearly about progress and risks, and support shared team outcomes in both hybrid and distributed environments.

Build and Maintain Systems

Engineers are responsible for building new capabilities while maintaining and improving existing systems. This includes designing scalable solutions, reducing technical debt, supporting operational stability, and contributing to continuous improvement.

Operate with Autonomy

A high degree of autonomy is expected. Given clear objectives, engineers should independently translate problems into actionable technical approaches, proactively identify improvements, and continuously expand relevant technical expertise.

Ownership and Accountability

Ownership is fundamental. Engineers are accountable for the quality, performance, and customer impact of their work from design through post-release support, and are expected to follow through on commitments.

AI-Enabled Engineering

AI is reshaping how software is built, and we are committed to leveraging it as a force multiplier for creativity, impact, and capability. Engineers are expected to confidently apply strong technical fundamentals while embracing AI tools and approaches to enhance productivity, problem-solving, and innovation. Curiosity, adaptability, and enthusiasm for integrating AI into meaningful product development are essential.

Contribute to Team Culture

Engineers contribute positively to a culture of professionalism, transparency, low bureaucracy, and mutual respect, strengthening team performance through authenticity, curiosity, and collaboration.

About the Role!

You'll own and drive the quality engineering strategy across the Karbon application, leading the transformation from a QA gatekeeping model to a developer-led quality culture where squads ship confidently without dedicated QA gatekeepers. This role sits at the intersection of technology, people, and process — building the foundations that enable every engineer to own quality.

We're in a significant transition. Our test automation stack needs uplift, our quality team needs strong technical leadership, and our developers need better tools and enablement to embed quality into their daily workflow. You'll lead this transformation end-to-end.

AI is central to how we want to work. We expect this role to actively embrace and champion AI tooling as a force multiplier for quality engineering — from AI-assisted test generation and intelligent data provisioning to AI-powered defect detection and code quality analysis. You'll set the standard for how AI is integrated into quality workflows and coach the wider engineering organisation to do the same.

What You'll Own

Strategy & Vision

• Owning and driving the Karbon Quality Engineering Strategy across its phased roadmap — from stabilisation through to optimisation and acceleration.
• Defining and championing architectural quality principles: fast feedback, deterministic tests, testing at the lowest viable layer, and shift-left practices.
• Establishing and tracking quality success metrics (release confidence, hotfix rates, developer satisfaction, coverage trends) with fully-automated, repeatable measurement.

People Leadership

• Leading and growing a team of 5+ quality engineers — providing coaching, mentorship, and career development while reshaping the function from inspection-focused to enablement-focused.
• Designing the QE engagement model across squads — determining where embedded QEs add value versus where squads operate independently with QE enablement support.
• Recruiting and developing developer-caliber senior quality engineers who lead by example and advocate for quality within engineering teams.

Developer Enablement & Quality Culture

• Driving a quality-first development culture — making it easier for developers to write, run, and trust tests by improving frameworks, documentation, tooling, and developer experience across all test layers.
• Championing the rebalancing of the test pyramid — shifting coverage down from E2E UI tests to unit, component, and integration layers where feedback is faster and more reliable.
• Leading collaborative quality practices (mob testing, testing parties, three-amigos sessions) and running the QE guild to ensure best practices are documented in-repo as living markdown.

Technical Leadership & AI

• Evaluating and making strategic tooling decisions (e.g. Cypress vs Playwright, Bruno vs .NET-based API testing) and defining the quality engineering approach for the Argo microservices migration.
• Driving improvements to CI/CD test execution — faster feedback loops, tests running on PRs, and reduced pipeline runtimes.
• Actively leveraging AI tools to accelerate quality engineering outcomes — including AI-assisted test generation, intelligent test data provisioning, automated quality analysis, and AI-powered code review.

This position description is intended merely as a guideline of the responsibilities involved in the position. The employee is expected to perform any other duties as reasonably required by their Manager.

What Sets You Apart (Must-Haves)

• Significant professional experience in quality engineering or software engineering, with a track record of building and leading quality functions in complex, enterprise-scale environments.
• Proven people leadership experience managing and growing teams of 5+ quality engineers or SDETs.
• Deep expertise in test automation strategy and implementation across multiple layers: unit, integration, API, and E2E UI testing, with hands-on experience in modern frameworks (Cypress, Playwright, or similar).
• Experience driving the transition from QA-as-gatekeeper to developer-owned quality models, with a developer advocate mindset — you see your role as making every engineer more effective at quality.
• Demonstrated enthusiasm for AI-assisted development and quality engineering. You actively use AI tools in your workflow and can articulate how AI enhances testing, code quality, and engineering productivity.
• Experience defining quality metrics and dashboards that drive engineering decision-making, with strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions preferred) and test execution optimisation.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence and align stakeholders across a globally distributed engineering organisation.

Nice to Have

• Experience with .NET/C# ecosystems and testing patterns within layered or service-oriented architectures.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Azure and observability tools such as Datadog or Application Insights.
• Experience in environments transitioning from monolithic to microservices architectures.
• Experience with frontend testing frameworks in Ember or React ecosystems.
• Background as a Senior+ individual contributor before moving into leadership.

Ideal for quality engineering leaders who thrive in transformation environments, enjoy complex domain systems, and are energised by building quality culture and capability from the ground up.

Our Core Technology Stack

We build modern, scalable software on a thoughtfully designed stack:

• Frontend: TypeScript and JavaScript across Ember (today), React, and React Native.
• Backend: .NET / C# (Web API, .NET Core) powering distributed services.
• Data: SQL Server with performance and integrity at scale.
• Cloud: Microsoft Azure.
• Observability: Datadog — metrics, logging, alerting, and dashboards.
• Test Automation: Cypress (E2E UI), Bruno (API), C# .NET integration tests, with an evolving strategy across all layers.

Our architecture continues to evolve as we scale — event-driven systems, well-defined microservices, and containerized deployments (Azure Container Apps) to build resilient, decoupled, and high-performing software.

Why Work at Karbon?

• Gain global experience across the USA, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada and the Philippines
• 4 weeks annual leave plus 5 extra "Karbon Days" off a year
• Flexible working environment
• Work with (and learn from) an experienced, high-performing team
• Be part of a fast-growing company that firmly believes in promoting high performers from within
• A collaborative, team-oriented culture that embraces diversity, invests in development, and provides consistent feedback
• Generous parental leave