Pretoria: Head of Quality Assurance

This role requires a seasoned leader who will transition the organization from reactive testing to proactive quality engineering and assurance. You will embed a culture of quality ownership across the entire Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), ensuring our high volume, mission-critical financial systems maintain flawless reliability and strict adherence to global payment standards (Visa/Mastercard) and financial regulatory compliance. Qualifications and Requirements: Minimum of 10 years of experience in Quality Assurance or Quality Engineering , with at least 5 years in a senior leadership or Head of QA role , managing small to medium-sized teams (10). Domain Expertise (Non-Negotiable): Deep, demonstrable experience within the FinTech, Banking, Payment Processing, or Card Services sector is essential. Education : Tertiary education in relevant field, Computer Science, Software Engineering. Industry recognized certifications e.g ISTQB Advanced level, SAFE, ITIL Technical Acumen: Expert knowledge of QA principles, methodologies, and modern automation tools (e.g., S elenium, Cypress, Playwright, Postman/RestAssured ). Strong grasp of complex, distributed, and cloud-based system architectures. Regulatory Knowledge: Proven familiarity with relevant financial service regulations, including local South African requirements and global payment scheme mandates (e.g., PCI DSS). Soft Skills: Exceptional leadership , communication, analytical, and critical thinking skills, with a proven ability to manage stakeholders and drive innovation and cultural change. Key Responsibilities: Strategy, Leadership, and Center of Excellence Technical & Operational Excellence – Automation Architecture, CI/CD pipeline Integration, Technical oversight – ensure teams maintain strong technical proficiency in tools, languages, (e.g SQL, C# OOP) and methodologies required to test complex, distributed service -orientated (microservices) and Cloud-based architectures. Financial Domain, Risk, and Compliance