Quality Assurance Lead

Have you led an end-to-end SaaS and/or CRM implementation, working closely with vendors to validate configurations and deliver outstanding results?

The Football Association (The FA) is making significant investments in its digital capabilities to drive new propositions, solve business challenges, and provide a platform for future growth. As we transform our digital products and platforms, we are looking for an experienced QA leader who can oversee testing across complex implementations, integrations, and multi-team environments.

We are looking for someone with proven implementation experience to join our Commercial Marketing Enablers (CME) programme to own the quality assurance strategy for new CRM and MarTech products, ensuring seamless integration, robust data flows, and consistently reliable delivery.

You will lead both onshore and offshore testing teams, while working closely with implementation partners across SaaS platforms to validate configurations, manage quality risks, and ensure end-to-end solutions meet both business and technical expectations.

What you will be doing:

• Lead and own the testing strategy, plans, and approach for large-scale CRM and MarTech implementations, ensuring alignment with programme objectives and The FA's wider digital transformation.

• Oversee functional, integration, and end-to-end testing, including complex data migrations, for CRM, ESP, MCO, and CDP solutions.

• Lead and coordinate third-party testing efforts to ensure high-quality, reliable products for FA customers.

• Lead and mentor testing teams both onshore and offshore, ensuring collaboration, consistency, and delivery excellence.

• Actively contribute to the design, development, and execution of manual and automated test cases, maintaining quality standards and governance.

• Coordinate UAT cycles with business users, establishing clear entry and exit criteria and achieving timely sign-offs.

• Define and oversee non-functional testing approaches, including performance, load, accessibility, and monitoring.

• Champion Shift Left testing by driving early QA involvement in requirements, design, code reviews, and architecture discussions.

• Define, implement, and maintain scalable QA processes, standards, and best practices.

• Collaborate with product managers, delivery managers, developers, and stakeholders to translate requirements into test strategies and plans.

• Drive test planning, estimation, risk assessments, and monitor execution and defect metrics to ensure release quality.

• Proactively communicate quality status, risks, and process effectiveness to QA management and stakeholders.

• Ensure efficient use of test tools, CI/CD pipelines, and test environments.

• Establish QA metrics and dashboards to provide visibility into test coverage, defect trends, release readiness, and production quality.

What we're looking for:

• Proven experience leading QA for CRM, ESP, MCO, or CDP implementations, including integration testing and enterprise data migrations.

• Experience leading SaaS implementations, including validating vendor configurations and ensuring high-quality delivery in close collaboration with external implementation partners.

• Experience managing and coordinating testing teams across onshore and offshore environments.

• Strong experience defining test strategies, plans, and risk-based testing approaches.

• Experience managing UAT cycles and test governance processes.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and stakeholder management skills.

• Experience with API testing tools (e.g., Postman) and test management tools (e.g., TestRail, Zephyr).

• Understanding of DevOps testing practices and CI/CD pipeline integration.

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience with automation tools such as Playwright (TypeScript/JavaScript) or Cypress.

• Familiarity with cloud platforms such as Azure DevOps or AWS.

• Experience with version control systems such as Git or GitHub.

This is a unique opportunity to lead QA for major digital implementations at The FA, shaping high-quality experiences for participants, fans, and attendees while driving collaboration across multi-location teams.