Senior Quality Assurance Team Lead

(Financial Services) - Contract

• 12-Month Contract Position / Hybrid working model /3 Days per Week Onsite in Sandton
• (Competitive market-related contract rate)

Our Financial client is seeking a highly experienced, hands-on Senior Quality Assurance Team Lead to join a major banking technology programme within the South African financial services sector. This role is ideal for a strong technical QA professional who can combine strategic leadership with active involvement in testing delivery, automation, stakeholder engagement, and quality engineering best practices. The successful candidate will lead a small-to-medium QA team while remaining technically involved in the delivery lifecycle across complex enterprise banking systems, APIs, digital platforms, and integration environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor QA Engineers and Test Analysts within an Agile delivery environment
• Drive quality assurance best practices across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
• Coordinate testing activities across multiple workstreams and project releases
• Ensure delivery quality, stability, and compliance within enterprise banking platforms
• Work closely with Developers, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Project Managers
• Actively participate in functional, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing
• Develop and maintain automated testing frameworks and scripts
• Perform API testing and backend validation across complex integrations
• Assist with defect triage, root-cause analysis, and production issue investigations
• Execute SQL/database validation and reconciliation testing where required
• Support continuous testing initiatives within CI/CD pipelines
• Collaborate with DevOps and Engineering teams to improve deployment quality and release stability
• Ensure testing aligns with enterprise banking standards and governance requirements
• Validate high-volume transactional processing and integration flows
• Provide regular reporting on testing progress, risks, quality metrics, and delivery readiness

Required Skills & Experience

Mandatory Experience:

• 10 years' experience in Software Quality Assurance
• Minimum 3 years' experience leading QA/Test teams
• Proven experience within Banking, Financial Services, FinTech, or enterprise transactional systems
• Strong hands-on testing and automation capability

Technical Skills:

• API testing tools such as Postman or RestAssured
• Selenium — browser UI automation / functional testing (web)
• SQL and database validation testing
• JMeter — performance / load testing (HTTP, APIs, queues, etc.)
• CI/CD tools such as Jenkins or Azure DevOps
• Jira and Agile delivery methodologies
• Performance testing experience using JMeter or LoadRunner advantageous
• Exposure to microservices and cloud-based architectures advantageous

Other:

• Playwright, or Cypress
• Helium — Python wrapper over Selenium, simpler API
• Appium — mobile app UI automation (iOS & Android)
• Test management tools such as Zephyr, Xray, or qTest

Qualifications

• Relevant Degree or Diploma in Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field
• ISTQB certification advantageous
• Agile or Scrum certifications beneficial

Personal Attributes

• Technically strong and detail-oriented; A proactive, hands-on leader; Comfortable working in fast-paced enterprise environments; Strong communication and stakeholder management skills; and Solutions-driven with excellent analytical thinking