Manager Software Quality Engineering & Product Operations

Optimum is seeking a Manager of Quality Engineering & Product Operations to lead a team that elevates product quality through modern Quality Engineering practices, with a strong emphasis on test automation, engineering tooling, and development-aligned delivery.

This role sits within Product Operations and bridges UAT, product quality, and software test automation across residential and business value streams - video, broadband, voice, mobile, customer applications, B2B services, and care/field experiences. The manager builds and coaches a team that reduces manual testing over time, embeds quality earlier in the development lifecycle, and partners with Product, Engineering, and Customer Operations to improve launch readiness and post-launch reliability.

The role also connects Operational Readiness Testing, UAT, Product Trials and Beta, launch readiness, and post-launch product health so quality findings translate into clear release decisions and future product improvements.

A successful candidate combines people leadership with hands-on Quality Engineering credibility: automation strategy, CI/CD-aware testing, data-driven quality decisions, and the ability to transform how teams validate and release products.

* Define and execute a Quality Engineering and test automation strategy for owned product domains.
* Lead the design, build, and maintenance of automated test frameworks and tools across residential and business products.
* Partner with Engineering to integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.
* Establish measurable automation and pipeline Key Results (e.g., automated coverage, flaky-test rate, mean time to validate, escaped defect rate) and drive accountability.
* Use and customize developer and observability tooling to instrument test systems, monitor quality signals, and improve feedback loops for development teams.
* Drive proof-of-concepts and prototypes to evaluate automation architectures, frameworks, and tooling tradeoffs before scaling.
* Prioritize and systematically reduce technical debt in test suites, frameworks, environments, and quality tooling.
* Introduce and mature controlled release validation capabilities.
* Act as an advocate for Quality Engineering and test automation across Product Operations and partner engineering teams.
* Manage end-to-end acceptance and validation cycles across multiple value streams, shifting from purely manual UAT toward risk-based, automation-assisted Quality Engineering.
* Lead the team in defining acceptance criteria, test scenarios, exit criteria, defect triage, and go/no-go recommendations grounded in evidence.
* Ensure rigorous testing and validation processes so releases meet acceptance criteria and reliability expectations before launch.
* Partner with Product and Engineering to refine requirements, story/acceptance criteria quality, and coverage gaps using modern SDLC practices.
* Coordinate launch readiness across environments, test data, automation suites, and cross-team dependencies.
* Ensure validation covers complete customer and frontline journeys, including installation, activation, usage, support, troubleshooting, recovery, and service restoration.
* Optimize product operations and quality processes for Optimum residential and commercial services, including broadband, video, voice, mobile, customer applications, and B2B offerings.
* Collect, analyze, and act on product performance, defect, pipeline, and customer feedback data to improve quality and operational efficiency.
* Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Field Operations, Care, IT, and Marketing to resolve systemic issues, drive root-cause remediation, and improve long-term service stability.
* Identify broken handoffs, unclear ownership, and outdated workflows; implement scalable process and tooling fixes across teams.
* Track product and quality KPIs/SLAs, incident trends, and automation health; lead initiatives that reduce service disruptions and defects escaping to production.
* Ensure findings from automated testing, ORT, UAT, Product Trials, Care, Field, incidents, and customer feedback have clear ownership and are incorporated into future product and operational improvements.
* Supervise a team of Quality Engineering / Product Operations professionals, providing mentorship, coaching, workload prioritization, and performance management.
* Build team capability in programming/scripting for test automation, modern test design, CI/CD practices, and product domain knowledge.
* Identify launch and operational risks early; develop mitigation strategies and escalate with clear options and data.
* Support executive-level reporting and dashboards covering automation progress, UAT/validation health, defect trends, and operational quality performance.
* Provide regular updates to stakeholders on Quality Engineering roadmap, release readiness, and strategic quality initiatives.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.
• 8+ years in Quality Engineering, software test automation, software development, product operations, or related engineering/quality leadership roles; telecom or large-scale technology experience preferred.
• 5+ years of people management experience
• Experience managing or formally leading people, ideally including engineers, automation developers, or quality professionals
• Hands-on experience building or leading test automation frameworks and reducing reliance on manual testing.
• Working knowledge of programming or scripting used in test automation, with the ability to guide technical contributors and evaluate automation approaches.
• Working knowledge of software development lifecycle methodologies, Agile/scrum delivery, and DevOps practices.
• Experience integrating automated tests with CI/CD pipelines and using tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Qase.
• Strong root-cause analysis, defect triage, and quality process design skills.
• Analytical, data-driven mindset with the ability to translate pipeline, defect, and customer insights into prioritized action.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to articulate technology vision and quality outcomes to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred

• Experience implementing or optimizing CI/CD pipelines and quality gates at scale.
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., Google Cloud or AWS) and modern developer tooling.
• Background leading both acceptance/UAT practices and automation strategy in a product organization.
• Strong understanding of cable/internet and adjacent service delivery (DOCSIS, Fiber/FTTH, IPTV, Wi-Fi) and how quality issues manifest for customers and frontline teams.
• Familiarity with B2B connectivity/network/security/communications services and residential product ecosystems.
• Experience with BI/analytics tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI) for quality and operational reporting.
  Comfort working with production systems for careful debugging and validation, with appropriate safeguards.
• Experience contributing to engineering/quality standards, documentation systems, and reusable frameworks.
• Knowledge of AI applications such as Cursor, ChatGPT, or GitHub Copilot to accelerate test design, automation development, and documentation is a plus.