Business Systems - Test Automation Lead

Test Automation Lead

Enterprise Systems • IFS ERP • Multi-site Manufacturing

ROLE PURPOSE 
Build and lead a pragmatic test automation and performance assurance program that improves the reliability of enterprise systems while reducing the cost and effort of repetitive testing. The initial focus is IFS ERP and its integrations across a multi-site manufacturing organization. 

The opportunity

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can turn business risk into a technically sound, executable test strategy. You will define the plan, establish priorities and standards, coordinate technical and business contributors, track delivery, and communicate results in a way that earns confidence and business buy-in.

Success requires more than writing automated scripts. The role must determine what should be automated, what should remain manual, how system capacity should be validated, and where investment will provide the greatest reduction in risk and recurring test effort.

What you’ll lead

• Develop and maintain a multi-year test automation roadmap aligned with enterprise priorities, implementation schedules, operational risk, and available capacity.
• Create a performance and load testing strategy that validates expected demand, peak usage, scalability, stability, and system limits across IFS ERP, integrations, APIs, and supporting services.
• Build a risk-based automation portfolio, beginning with high-value repetitive test plans such as smoke and regression testing.
• Define measurable success criteria, baselines, thresholds, execution schedules, reporting standards, and decision points.
• Own the backlog and delivery plan for test automation and performance testing, including dependencies, risks, milestones, and outcomes.
• Guide the design of reusable test data, test environments, automated suites, and supporting infrastructure.
• Integrate appropriate automated testing into software delivery pipelines while preserving practical manual validation where it adds value.
• Lead investigation of performance findings with developers, architects, infrastructure specialists, vendors, and system owners, distinguishing symptoms from root causes.
• Create clear, decision-oriented reporting that explains risk, evidence, recommendations, tradeoffs, and progress to both technical and business audiences.
• Build capability across QA and delivery teams through coaching, standards, templates, reviews, and practical knowledge transfer.

How you’ll work

• Partner with process owners and business subject matter experts to identify critical workflows, realistic volumes, peak conditions, acceptable outcomes, and operational consequences of failure.
• Work with technical teams to understand architecture, APIs, integrations, telemetry, data requirements, environment constraints, and deployment practices.
• Facilitate prioritization when business value, technical feasibility, delivery capacity, and risk compete.
• Demonstrate progress through working test assets, transparent plans, concise status reporting, and evidence-based recommendations.
• Drive execution through influence and coordination, including work completed by people who may not report directly to the role.
• Keep the approach pragmatic: automate where it creates repeatable value, avoid automation for its own sake, and adjust the plan as systems and business needs evolve.

What we need

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline. An equivalent combination of post-secondary education, professional certifications, and directly related experience may be considered.
• Progressive experience in software quality engineering, test automation, performance engineering, or a closely related discipline, including experience leading a program or significant workstream.
• Demonstrated ability to create a strategy, translate it into an executable plan, track delivery, and communicate outcomes to varied stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience designing and maintaining automated tests using modern tools and frameworks for user interfaces, APIs, integrations, and data validation.
• Experience planning and executing performance, load, stress, spike, scalability, and endurance testing, including defining workloads and interpreting results.
• Strong understanding of regression testing, risk-based test design, test data management, defect management, and traceability.
• Working knowledge of CI/CD, source control, observability, logs, metrics, and the software development lifecycle.
• Ability to investigate results using SQL, API tooling, telemetry, and collaboration with technical specialists.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical findings, uncertainty, and tradeoffs in business terms.
• Sound judgment, self-direction, organization, and persistence in a cross-functional environment.

Valuable experience

• Enterprise ERP testing, particularly IFS Cloud or another complex manufacturing ERP platform.
• Multi-site manufacturing processes such as order management, configure-to-order, planning, procurement, production, warehousing, shipping, and finance.
• Cloud-based load testing and automated delivery platforms, including tools such as Azure Load Testing, JMeter, Playwright, Selenium, k6, or equivalent technologies.
• Testing distributed systems where reliability depends on interactions among ERP, middleware, APIs, external applications, and data services.
• Working with software vendors or managed service providers on system sizing, tuning, defect resolution, and service performance.
• Coaching testers or developers and establishing repeatable quality engineering practices.