Global Head of Quality Assurance

 
#My client focused on Software Technology, a global fortune 500 company, they have a software technology R&D center based in Guangzhou, China.
#Their IT software products will be promoted to internal stakeholders or end-users. Dedicated to driving digital transformation in the banking technology industry. To ensure more efficient, more safety, more reliable internally and externally.
#I am assisting them to source a role called Global Head of Quality Assurance, will lead a team size not less than 150 persons. To centralize a QA Hub, empower and supporting IT software development departments globally.
#This role will direct report to global engineering HEAD, which means your English speaking must be fluent. This role can also accept candidates overseas who would like to relocate Guangzhou, work permit can be provided if necessarily.
#Candidate with at least 15 years+ related IT software working experience. Prefer technical-driven candidates with solid technical skills, also along with international insights, good soft skills to deal with different stakeholders.
#Working location is Guangzhou/Xi’an, China. 2-3 days can be remote working each week.
 
About role background:
Accountable for quality assurance for CMB and GB
The quality assurance function is fragmented across different teams. Candidate will have to set-up a quality assurance group across Wholesale Banking Technology, and create synergies across service lines. The candidate will have to transform the function and align it to the new DevSecOps process, leveraging best-practices from wider Group and other GB / GF teams. The candidate should be able to establish a process to cover end-to-end testing strategy, including vendor products and platforms, as well as alignment with company’s internal functional testing, NFR testing coverage, etc.
 
Key Business Needs:

• Improvement in product quality
• Improved performance
• Faster deployment
• Collaboration between Business & Engineering
• Service up-time through faster problem-solving abilities

Improvements under DevSecOps: enhanced Developer / Tester experience through seamless adoption of

• Continuous Testing capability for effective CI/CD
• Ready to deploy & integrate test pipelines
• Self-service enabled digital platforms
• Built-in-quality across Engineering & Ops
• Low-code / No-code Hyper Automation & Cognitive QE

Key problem statements that will be addressed by the role:

• Dependency on external and internal systems for testing
• Lack of dedicated Test beds, limited devices for Application testing
• Fragmented Perf Engineering setups duplicating infra, cost and efforts
• Testing trend analysis for API Migration
• Data insufficiency for validating varied API responses

Governance and Committee Memberships (membership of ExCos, Risk Management Meeting)
WSIT ExCo (WSIT Leadership Meetings)
WSIT ManCo (WSIT Management Meetings)
Risk, Control, Compliance and Governance Meetings
Demonstrate leadership on production service and incident management. Maintain   awareness of operational risk and minimize the likelihood of it occurring - including identification, assessment, mitigation and control, loss identification and reporting in accordance with section B.1.2 of the Group Operations FIM.

Observation of Internal Controls (Compliance Policy / FIM requirements) 
Maintain and observe company internal control standards, implement, and observe Group Compliance Policy, including the timely implementation of recommendations made by internal/external auditors and external regulators. Foster a compliance culture and implement Group Compliance Policy by managing compliance risk in liaison with the Head of Group Compliance, Regional Compliance Officer, Area Compliance Officer or Local Compliance Officer, ensuring adequate compliance resources are in place and training is provided, and optimizing relations with regulators.
 
Principal Accountabilities and Responsibilities (e.g., for Business, Customers and Stakeholders; internal control environment, etc.)
Impact on the Business / Function

• The candidate will be responsible for establishing and managing the quality assurance initiatives across
• The candidate will be also responsible for creating an overall / end-to-end testing strategy with various third-party platform operators

Customers / Stakeholders
The candidate is accountable for working with senior engineers across service lines and the wider engineering community and able to interface with WS IT Executive Committee and Wholesale Business on improvements and deliverables

Operational Effectiveness & Control
Control functions to ensure that products and services are built to provide the required levels of availability, functional capability and non-functional capability, and systemic operational issues are addressed in the design lifecycle

Leadership & Teamwork

• Organizational leadership to be able to lead and transform organizational capability to set-up a best-in-class quality assurance management group
• Ability to engage & influence large number of internal and external stakeholders o Ability to work in global and regional matrix structure

 
Functional Knowledge
The candidate must have a strong technology depth and breadth, and experience in establishing and managing quality assurance function in a large scale transformation program covering functional, end-to-end processing NFRs and automation.
 
The candidate should also demonstrate transformational leadership, in terms of setting up an organizational capability to optimize the quality assurance process aligned with DevOps / DevSecops process and planning, conducting end-to-end downstream testing with the Banks’ core banking and finance systems.
 
Preferred: Business domain knowledge in commercial banking, transaction banking and trade finance as well as experience in setting up a quality assurance function for a large scale enterprise program

• Organizational leadership to be able to lead and transform organizational capability
• Technology domain knowledge in setting up a quality assurance function in a large-scale enterprise application platform
• Strong stakeholder management capability
• Business domain knowledge on Commercial Banking business and Global banking preferred

 
General Knowledge & Experience (Minimum requirements of the role)

• The candidate should have minimum 15 years of work experience (preferably all tech)
• The candidate should have in-depth understanding of quality assurance function, and hands-on experience in managing functional, end-to-end NFRs and test automation
• The candidate should have experience in managing diverse set of business and technology stakeholders
• The candidate should understand how DevOps works and how to utilize it in the agile process to create effective quality assurance strategy and execution plan
• The candidate should demonstrate strong hands-on delivery management capability