Senior Quality Manager

Team Name:

YOUR MISSION AND ABOUT BLIZZARD QUALITY ASSURANCE (QA)

At Blizzard Entertainment, we pour our hearts and souls into everything we create. Best known for iconic video game universes, including Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft, we’ve been creating genre-defining games for millions of players around the world for more than 30 years. We’re on a quest: bring our dreams to life and craft the most epic entertainment experiences…ever. Hard work, iteration, and polish go into the Blizzard “secret recipe,” but the most important ingredients come from talented people who share our vision.  

The concept of “Blizzard polish,” that is, the infinite care and loving detail put into every aspect of our games, is something we take seriously and pride ourselves on delivering to our players.  It’s a responsibility shared across the company – and its undisputed heart and soul is Blizzard QA. Blizzard QA is a close-knit team; we care about iteration, problem-solving, and succeeding as a group. We genuinely love what we do for a living and expect the same from everyone who joins us!

JOB SUMMARY

The Senior Quality Manager oversees Quality Assurance (QA) operations and testing for one or more products, ensuring software quality and process improvement. This role involves managing the end-to-end test team, aligning with departmental and organizational strategies. The Senior Quality Manager establishes standards for cross-functional teams, manages product test schedules and resources, and drives a strategic vision for quality assurance. Responsibilities include addressing project-impacting issues, managing team members' performance for excellence, and promoting software development best practices. This role plays a crucial role in delivering epic gaming experiences for customers and key internal partners.

WHAT YOU BRING TO THE TABLE

• Oversee end-to-end management for one or more product and test teams, ensuring alignment with department and organizational strategies across globally distributed teams. 
• Establish standards for cross-functional teams, encompassing strategy, test execution, and reporting, while ensuring the quality of all deliverables, workflows, and relationships. 
• Manage product test schedules, team needs, dependencies, and resources, collaborating with all quality stakeholders to incorporate advanced testing methodologies into the testing strategy.
• Define and achieve annual quality goals, driving a strategic vision for quality assurance improvement. 
• Analyze data to report on and shape the quality strategy, promote software development best practices, and enhance the customer experience. 
• Conduct regular business reviews and provide quality-related services to production leadership while refining and optimizing the role of quality assurance within the company. 
• Develop and maintain information and visualizations to tell compelling stories to key stakeholders. Identify and report trends and insights to support QA in meeting its strategic objectives. Participate and lead meetings to provide updates, share information, drive change, and facilitate effective decision-making. 
• Hire, develop and retain talent. Provide leadership, support and guidance to a team, ensuring their performance is managed effectively and fostering a productive, positive, collaborative work culture. 
• Champion efforts that build synergy, trust, collaboration, and inclusivity within the organization. Own and manage relationships with key partners, resources, colleagues, and leaders ensuring transparency around critical decisions and trade-offs. 
• Lead, partner, and collaborate with teams across the company on quality initiatives, driving quality projects with regional teams, partners and stakeholders, and QA teams to contribute to the long-term QA vision and foster proactive and engaging communication with stakeholders. 
• Performs other duties as assigned.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Experience 

• Minimum 10 years of experience in Quality Assurance.
• Minimum of 5 years in directing the work of individual contributors and multiple levels of management and teams.
• Experience leading regional test teams and forecasting and managing test budgets for large projects. 
• Experience with game engines, content and asset editors, and shared technologies.

• Experience working with global outsource teams.

Knowledge & Skills

• High School diploma or equivalent required.  Bachelor’s Degree in a related field preferred.
• Be an expert in multiple software testing methodologies. 
• Thorough understanding of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), specifically QA processes in agile and waterfall development environments. 
• Practical knowledge of relational databases such as Oracle, MySQL, & SQLServer.  Thorough understanding of Jira process.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, planning, organization, and time management skills. Ability to tailor presented information for the appropriate audience.

EXTRA POINTS

• White box testing experience.
• Certification in any of the following: PMP, Scrum Master, and/or ISTQB-ATM. 
• Coding Knowledge: XML / HTML, JavaScript, Python, Java, C / C++ / C#, SQL.
• High level of gaming knowledge and/or skill.
• Passion for Blizzard’s line of products and services.