Director, Quality Engineering

Job description

Join Starr, a global leader in commercial insurance with over a century of expertise. We empower our employees to innovate, make impactful decisions, and build lasting client relationships worldwide. At Starr, you'll work in an entrepreneurial culture alongside accessible leaders, leveraging our financial strength and vast industry experience to deliver solutions for our clients, no matter how complex. Grow your career with a rapidly growing company that invests in its people and their ability to drive real progress. Job Title: Director, Quality Engineering Location: New York, NY / Philadelphia, PA / Atlanta, GA Department: Starr Technology Group Overview: The Director, Quality Engineering plays a critical leadership role responsible for operationalizing and scaling Starr’s Quality Engineering (QE) strategy. This leadership position is tasked with leading the execution of QE methodologies, managing QE teams, and driving the maturity of automated and manual testing practices to ensure quality across all technology initiatives. The Director will forge collaborative relationships with engineering, product, architecture, and delivery partners to embed quality, automation, and continuous improvement into the software development life cycle. As a champion for robust execution and quality excellence, this leader will manage the performance of distributed testing teams, monitor key metrics, and lead process optimization and automation adoption efforts. Strong people leadership, execution discipline, and deep experience with modern quality engineering in the insurance or related financial services industries are essential. Key Responsibilities: Quality Engineering Leadership Lead, mentor, and grow a diverse team of QE test engineers, and automation specialists; provide direct oversight, set clear goals, and support professional development. Execute on the global QE strategy, standards, tooling and frameworks customizing implementation to meet business and technology program needs. Foster a culture of accountability, quality-first mindset, collaboration, and ownership of outcomes, ensuring team engagement and alignment to organizational goals. Operational Excellence & Execution Oversee day-to-day QE delivery across multiple streams/programs, ensuring timely, high-quality results throughout all phases of the SDLC. Implement and manage automated, functional, integration, performance, security, and data quality testing practices. Drive the effective adoption and standardization of QE tools, frameworks, and platforms across teams, ensuring process adherence and repeatability. Collaborate with Delivery Leads, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Engineers and stakeholders to define and implement domain-driven test strategies and foundational test suites—ensuring robust, reusable regression coverage and maximizing opportunities for automated testing. Provide hands-on leadership in the design and evolution of test frameworks and suite structures, leveraging deep business domain expertise to ensure all tests accurately reflect critical system behaviors and meet coverage goals. Quality Management & Metrics Track and analyze QE KPIs - including defect metrics, coverage ratios, automation rates, cycle time, etc. - providing regular reporting. Identify and escalate quality trends, risks, and blockers; recommend and implement remediation plans in collaboration with engineering and delivery leaders. Proactively surface process and tool enhancement opportunities through KPI analysis and industry best practices. Collaboration & SDLC Integration Partner with software engineering, product, and business teams to embed QE early in the development lifecycle, ensuring early defect detection and reliable releases. Advocate for the use of standardized procedures and documentation for test planning, design, execution, and defect management. Facilitate knowledge sharing, training, and onboarding on QE standards and best practices. Continuous Improvement & Compliance Champion automation adoption to reduce manual effort, accelerate release cycles, and achieve higher test coverage. Lead and participate in process optimization, root cause analysis, and quality improvement initiatives. Support quality governance and compliance activities, ensuring regulatory, security, data privacy, and risk management standards are met. Manage relationships with internal and external QE partners. Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field (Master’s preferred). 10+ years’ experience in software quality engineering or QA, with at least 5+ years in management roles leading distributed teams. Experience with hands-on QE within P&C Insurance industry is required. Strong expertise in building, scaling, and overseeing QE operations—including automation frameworks, SDLC integration, and test management. Hands-on experience with leading QE tools (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Tosca, LoadRunner, Postman), CI/CD, cloud-based platforms, and test environments. Proven track record driving automation adoption and measurable improvements in quality KPIs. Excellent people leadership, team building, and stakeholder engagement skills. Deep understanding of industry standards for security, compliance, and data privacy as they relate to QE. Experience managing teams in a global delivery model. Knowledge of data quality assurance, cloud migration, and digital transformation initiatives. Starr is an equal opportunity employer, which means we'll consider all suitably qualified applicants regardless of gender identity or expression, ethnic origin, nationality, religion or beliefs, age, sexual orientation, disability status or any other protected characteristic. We recruit and develop our people based on merit and we're committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We offer first class training and development opportunities to all employees. Our aim is to grow our own talent and bring out the best in people.