Quality Assurance Lead

The Football Association (The FA) is making significant investments in our foundational digital capabilities to support the development of new propositions, address business challenges, and provide a platform for future growth. This investment is expanding our digital and technology capabilities as we pursue our ambition to reach more people, grow participation, and better serve existing participants, fans, and attendees. As we transform our digital products and platforms, we are seeking talented and experienced professionals to accelerate the delivery of world-class, direct-to-consumer experiences. We are seeking an experienced QA Lead to join us on an fixed term contract to drive the testing strategy and delivery for our Commercial Marketing Enablers (CME) programme, supporting The FA's wider digital transformation. This role will lead quality assurance for implementing new CRM and MarTech products within The FA's technical landscape, ensuring robust validation of integrations and data flows while enabling multiple stakeholder groups to modernise their processes and ways of working. This role is based at the iconic Wembley Stadium two days per week.

What you will be doing:

• Lead and own the testing strategy, plans, and approach for the Commercial Marketing Enablers (CME) programme, ensuring alignment with programme objectives and supporting The FA's digital transformation.
• Oversee functional, integration, and end-to-end testing for CRM, ESP, MCO, and CDP solutions, ensuring platform stability and compliance.
• Lead and coordinate third-party testing efforts to ensure delivery of high-quality, reliable products to FA customers.
• Contribute to the design, development, and execution of automated and manual test cases, providing guidance and hands-on support to maintain quality standards.
• Coordinate and manage UAT cycles with business users, ensuring clear entry and exit criteria and timely sign-offs.
• Define and oversee non-functional testing approaches, including performance, load, accessibility, and monitoring and alerting.
• Champion Shift Left testing by driving early QA involvement in the software development lifecycle, including requirements gathering, design and 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.
• Own the efficient and effective testing of all changes throughout the release cycle.
• Facilitate cross-team communication to resolve quality issues, dependencies, and blockers early.
• 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:

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Experience testing SaaS MarTech products such as CRMs, ESPs, MCOs, and CDPs.
• Proven experience defining test strategies, plans, and risk-based testing approaches.
• Experience in testing integrations and data migration in enterprise environments.
• Experience managing UAT cycles and test governance processes.
• Ability to lead and coordinate testing teams across offshore, onshore, and business functions.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience with API testing tools, such as Postman.
• Experience with test management tools, such as TestRail or 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.
• Experience with cloud platforms, such as Azure DevOps or AWS.
• Familiarity with version control systems, such as Git or GitHub.
• Experience working in football or other sporting associations or stadiums.

What's in it for you?

We are committed to ensuring everyone can flourish in their roles, to achieve this we have unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, which is the home of English Football. We are also delighted to offer a world-class, Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire which is an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders. We pride ourselves in offering a competitive salary as well as great opportunities to develop and grow in your role. But that is not all; we also have a range of exciting benefits, some of which can be found below:

• Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encouraging you to connect and learn with your colleagues and look after your mental health and well-being.
• Free, nutritious lunches at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
• Free private medical cover.
• A contributory pension scheme.
• An additional 'Thank You' days leave, volunteering days as well as 25 days annual leave ( based on a full-time, permanent contract. )
• A hybrid working model which offers greater flexibility. Currently, we are working within a hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team. The remaining days can be worked remotely. We will continue to monitor this model, and it may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary. The contractual location of this role can be found on the FA Careers page.

We are a diverse workplace, aspiring to represent football across the country. The Football Association actively promotes inclusion and diversity, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself at work. We welcome applications from everyone and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process, please mention this during your application. As part of the FA's commitment to ensuring a safe environment for everyone in football, every employee will be required to complete a DBS check. The level of the check required will be based on the activity of the specific job role and in line with legislation and government guidance.