QA Lead

We are seeking an experienced QA Lead to provide strategic and hands-on leadership for quality engineering across the program. The QA Lead owns the overall quality of the program by establishing quality standards, leading quality engineering activities across multiple Agile teams, and ensuring changes are validated from an end-to-end program perspective. This hands-on leadership role actively supports testing, automation, data validation, and technical problem solving while leading the adoption of AI-assisted quality engineering, intelligent test automation, and continuous improvement initiatives to enhance productivity, optimize delivery, and improve software quality throughout the software development lifecycle. The QA Lead also mentors and develops a team of QA engineers, fostering a collaborative Agile mindset and promoting team-of-teams coordination across the program.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the overall quality of the program by establishing quality standards, providing oversight across all Agile teams, ensuring end-to-end validation of changes, and driving continuous improvement throughout the software delivery lifecycle.
• Lead and mentor a team of QA data and automation engineers by providing hands-on technical leadership, actively contributing to testing, automation, and data validation efforts as needed, removing technical roadblocks, and fostering a collaborative Agile mindset across the program. Provide leadership and day-to-day oversight for QA engineers across Cormac and partner organizations, ensuring consistent quality standards, effective resource coordination, mentoring, and successful delivery of Program Increment (PI) objectives.
• Provide strategic guidance on Agile testing practices, test strategy, and continuous improvement.
• Develop and implement comprehensive test strategies and test plans that align with PI objectives, ensuring functional, regression, performance, and integration testing coverage.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted quality engineering practices, leveraging generative AI to accelerate test design, automation development, defect analysis, documentation, and overall QA productivity while ensuring appropriate governance, validation, and security.
• Evaluate and implement AI-enabled testing solutions to improve test coverage, optimize regression testing, enhance root cause analysis, and provide predictive quality insights that reduce delivery risk.
• Drive continuous improvements in quality engineering by identifying opportunities to streamline processes, increase automation, reduce manual effort, optimize resource utilization, and improve delivery predictability and overall team efficiency.
• Maintain a comprehensive understanding of the end-to-end program architecture, business processes, and system dependencies to ensure changes are evaluated for downstream impacts and do not introduce unintended issues across applications or Agile teams.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Release Train Engineers to ensure quality is built into every increment of delivery and that Definition of Done (DoD) is consistently met.
• Oversee both automated and manual testing, driving adoption of test automation to improve efficiency, predictability, and reduce time-to-market.
• Manage the defect lifecycle from identification through resolution, working with cross-functional teams to prioritize and resolve defects effectively.
• Track, measure, and report on key quality metrics (e.g., defect density, test coverage, pass/fail rates, escaped defects) to stakeholders and leadership, using data to drive continuous improvement.
• Continuously assess and improve QA processes, tools, and methodologies, ensuring alignment with the delivery pipeline.
• Identify and escalate quality risks impacting PI or release commitments and propose mitigation strategies to reduce delivery impact.
• Provide oversight and as necessary design, develop, and execute comprehensive test plans, test scenarios in and API-based applications, alignment with Agile team commitments and Program Increment (PI) objectives.
• Facilitate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and validate end-to-end user workflows. Provide oversight in the creation and maintenance of reusable automation scripts for regression, functional, and integration testing.
• Implement and evolve test automation frameworks (e.g., Page Object Model, BDD/Cucumber, and CI/CD pipeline integration) to support scalable, maintainable, and efficient testing.
• Execute regression, performance, load, and security testing to validate product stability, reliability, and federal compliance across multi-tier environments.
• Analyze and verify bug reports, reproduce issues, document findings, and collaborate with development teams to ensure timely resolution.
• Track and report metrics (e.g., test coverage, pass/fail rates, defect density, escaped defects).
• Conduct root cause analysis (RCA) and lead defect triage meetings to prevent recurring issues across releases.
• Enforce CMMI Maturity Level 3 (ML3) quality standards and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) across all program task areas.
• Conduct independent quality reviews of all contractual deliverables, test artifacts, Section 508 accessibility checks, and traceability matrices prior to government customer sign-off.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of total software quality engineering experience, with 3+ years in a Lead capacity driving functional, API, regression, performance, load, and security testing.
• Hands-on experience with modern DevOps and test automation tools, including GitHub, Jenkins, Selenium Grid, Docker, and CI/CD pipelines for scalable test execution and continuous quality assurance.
• Experience with AWS services, including Amazon CloudWatch, for monitoring application health, analyzing logs, troubleshooting issues, and supporting quality engineering activities.
• Demonstrated ability to independently design and develop complex SQL queries to validate source-to-target data mappings, business rules, ETL processes, and reports.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and support quality engineering activities across multiple Agile sprint teams simultaneously, including UI applications, ETL/data pipelines, reporting solutions, dashboards, data extracts, APIs, accessibility (Section 508), security, performance/load, and integration testing.
• Hands-on experience with software quality engineering tools and technologies, including SQL, Java, Python, Selenium, Cucumber, Selenium Grid, Postman, DBeaver, Databricks, Docker, GitHub, Jenkins, AWS CloudWatch, IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio Code, Microsoft Excel, Beyond Compare, XML creation and validation, and CI/CD pipelines. 
• Experience enforcing QA processes within a CMMI Level 3 (or higher) appraised organization, along with Section 508 compliance testing.
• Strong hands-on experience reproducing and documenting defects, tracking metrics (escaped defects, test coverage, pass/fail rates), and executing root cause analyses.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Moderate Risk Public Trust clearance; who is currently residing and is a citizen of the United States.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience.

Desired Qualifications

• Certifications: Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA), ISTQB Advanced Test Manager / Test Automation Engineer, or CISA.
• Agile Frameworks: SAFe Agilist, SAFe Practitioner, or Certified ScrumMaster (CSM).

The ideal candidate is a Senior QA Lead with 8+ years of software testing experience, including 3+ years specifically within CMS federal healthcare contracts. They are a hands-on technical lead who can write SQL queries and build CI/CD-integrated test automation frameworks (POM, BDD) for web, mobile, and API layers, while also possessing the regulatory maturity to enforce CMMI Level 3 compliance, coordinate IV&V/UAT findings, and ensure zero-defect releases for CMS quality measure reporting systems.

Location: Leesburg, VA

Work Arrangement: 100% Remote

Why CORMAC?

At CORMAC, we leverage the power of Data Management and Analytics to enable our customers to achieve their strategic goals. With over 20 years of experience in Health Information Technology (HIT), human-centered design principles and Agile development methodologies, CORMAC delivers complex digital solutions to solve some of the most challenging problems facing public healthcare programs today.

As a US Federal Government contractor in the public healthcare sector, our work is impactful and cutting-edge while being performed in a supportive, collaborative, and welcoming environment. At CORMAC, we have a highly diverse workforce and believe the work environment is a place where creativity, collaboration, enthusiasm, and innovation happens, regardless of location.

E-Verify Participation/EEO

As an Equal Employment Opportunity employer, CORMAC provides equal employment opportunity to all employees and applicants without regard to an individual's protected status, including race/ethnicity, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, creed, age, gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, including pregnancy, childbirth, or related conditions, disability, military service, veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected status.