Manager, Quality Assurance

Join Our Team

At Onward Robotics, we are a bold, gritty, and purposeful team with an ambitious mission to revolutionize fulfillment. Our team is driven by a client-first mentality: we aim to solve hard problems and fuel our clients’ growth with innovation. We are seeking talented individuals who will have a huge impact on both our business and our team. Join us on our mission as we move fast, think big, and have fun!

About Us

Onward Robotics delivers innovative automation technology that coordinates humans and robots as a cohesive system to revolutionize fulfillment. Our Meet Me solution combines proprietary software with person-to-goods mobile robots to increase efficiency in warehousing, distribution, and e-commerce operations. Onward Robotics provides the boost in productivity, flexibility, and speed that companies need to remain competitive and grow. Learn more at onwardrobotics.com.

About the Role

Reporting to the Vice President of Engineering, the Manager, Quality Assurance will lead our QA engineering function across robotic systems, cloud services, and user-facing applications. This role will own the strategic direction, team development, and hands-on execution of quality initiatives that ensure our intelligent automation platform delivers exceptional reliability, performance, and safety to enterprise customers. Success in this role requires a blend of high-level vision, technical depth, embraces wearing multiple hats, and isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves.

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Strategy
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of QA engineers responsible for validating software, firmware, and integrated robotic systems.
• Define and continuously improve QA methodologies, tools, test coverage strategies, and release readiness criteria.
• Champion a culture of quality across engineering, product, and deployment teams.
• Partner with recruiting and engineering leadership on hiring and onboarding QA talent.

• Process & Execution
• Collaborate with Product Management, Systems Engineering, and Development teams to clarify requirements, acceptance criteria, and testability.
• Design and implement robust test plans, including manual, automated, performance, security, and regression tests across the full software stack.
• Prioritize and coordinate testing activities across sprints, releases, and feature roadmaps using Agile/Scrum practices.
• Leverage test management platforms (e.g., Xray, Zephyr) and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions) to automate test execution and reporting.
• Conduct defect triage, root cause analysis, and risk-based assessments to drive timely resolution.

• Technology & Automation
• Identify opportunities for test automation and develop scalable frameworks using Selenium, Python, Postman, etc.
• Monitor and improve system performance through load testing, API validation, and long-run durability testing.
• Integrate security testing tools to validate vulnerability mitigation, authentication/authorization, and network attack resilience.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Represent QA in architecture reviews, go/no-go decisions, and customer readiness discussions.
• Work collaboratively with our Product Management and Engineering Development teams to groom requirements in order to clarify scope and clearly define acceptance criteria.
• Work closely with deployment teams to validate field reliability and translate real-world issues into test cases.
• Provide QA visibility through dashboards, metrics, and retrospectives that influence product and engineering roadmaps.

Core Competencies

• Leading and organizing an engineering QA team
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Issue tracking and reporting
• Automation test frameworks

Typical Day

• Lead daily QA team stand-up to review priorities, blockers, and test progress
• Coordinate with Engineering, Product, and Program teams to align on daily deliverables and issue resolution
• Evaluate new test requests and assign resources accordingly
• Monitor active test plans for hardware, firmware, and software components
• Ensure test coverage aligns with product milestones and deployment timelines
• Review and categorize incoming defect reports from internal teams and pilot customers
• Facilitate root cause analysis and cross-functional collaboration to drive resolution
• Escalate critical issues and risks to leadership as needed
• Assess QA workflows for efficiency improvements, automation opportunities, and tool enhancements
• Drive continuous improvement in test procedures and documentation standards
• Provide coaching, technical guidance, and career development support for QA engineers
• Conduct 1:1s and support hiring or onboarding of new QA team members
• Participate in sprint planning, deployment readiness reviews, and post-mortems
• Serve as the voice of quality in cross-departmental conversations and release decisions
• Track and report key QA metrics (e.g., test coverage, defect trends, cycle times)
• Provide data-driven insights to stakeholders to support decision-making and product improvements

Direct Reports

QA Engineers (4-7)

Required Skills

• 6+ years of experience in QA roles, with 2+ years leading or managing QA teams.
• Proven track record in QA for distributed systems, embedded software, or industrial automation.
• Strong command of test strategy, QA lifecycle management, and modern Agile methodologies.
• Hands-on expertise with test tools such as:
• Automation: Selenium/WebDriver, Python, Java, Cucumber
• CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Docker
• Performance: JMeter, LoadRunner
• Security: OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite
• Deep understanding of system-level testing for robotics, IoT, or real-time control systems.

Experience with test management platforms (e.g., Xray, TestRail), Jira, and Confluence.

Familiarity with database querying (SQL), APIs, cloud infrastructure, and Linux environments.

Excellent analytical, debugging, and communication skills.