Senior Practice Manager

Senior Practice Manager

Location: Telford, UK
Experience: 12-18 years
Work Mode: Hybrid (remote/travel to office twice a week)
Employment Type: Full-time

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Senior Practice Manager - QAT to lead and grow the Quality Assurance & Testing practice. This leadership role involves driving overall strategy, capability building, delivery excellence, and stakeholder engagement for QAT across multiple accounts and geographies. The ideal candidate will have deep experience in testing services, automation, quality engineering, and managing large QA teams.

Key Responsibilities Practice Leadership & Capability Development

• Define and execute the strategic roadmap for the QAT practice, focusing on quality engineering, automation, and next-gen testing solutions.
• Build and enhance competencies across functional testing, automation, performance testing, SDET skills, and DevOps QA.
• Develop training frameworks, certification pathways, and career progression models for QAT professionals.
• Lead recruitment planning for QAT resources, ensuring strong internal and external talent pipelines.

Delivery Governance & Excellence

• Oversee end-to-end QA delivery across multiple projects, ensuring compliance to quality standards and methodologies.
• Implement best practices in test automation, continuous testing, performance engineering, and shift-left QA.
• Monitor delivery KPIs including quality metrics, defect leakage, automation coverage, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
• Provide technical guidance and support on complex testing engagements, RFPs, and escalations.

Client & Stakeholder Management

• Engage with senior business and technology stakeholders to understand quality goals and define QA strategy.
• Participate in client meetings, steering committees, and governance forums to drive quality outcomes.
• Support pre-sales activities-solution design, estimations, proposals, testing frameworks, and value-based offerings.

Operational & Financial Management

• Own practice-level P&L components such as utilisation, billability, hiring, and cost management.
• Drive resource planning, forecasting, and productivity improvement initiatives across the QAT practice.
• Ensure alignment with organisation-wide delivery frameworks, compliance, and transformation goals.

Innovation & Transformation

• Champion emerging trends in QA such as AI/ML testing, low-code/no-code automation, cloud-based testing, and test accelerators.
• Lead internal innovation programs, PoCs, accelerators, reusable assets, and frameworks for the QAT practice.
• Promote continuous improvement through collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and communities of practice.

Required Skills & Experience

• 12-18 years of experience in QA/QAT with strong leadership experience managing large teams.
• Expertise in test automation frameworks (Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Appium, BDD, etc.) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong understanding of functional testing, performance testing, security testing, and non-functional testing.
• Prior experience leading QA delivery for enterprise-scale programs across Agile/SAFe environments.
• Demonstrated experience in practice management, P&L management, competency building, and QA transformation.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills.