Senior Manager, Test & Quality Assurance

About the Opportunity

Ellucian is seeking a strategic and technically accomplished Senior Manager, Test & Quality Assurance to lead our global Quality Engineering organization within Professional Services. This highly visible leadership role is responsible for defining and executing our enterprise test and quality assurance strategy, ensuring consistent, scalable, and high-quality customer implementations across our global delivery organization.

Reporting into Professional Services, you will lead a distributed team of Quality Engineers across the United States and Latin America, while partnering closely with our India Center of Excellence (CoE) through a dotted-line leadership model to deliver a unified global quality strategy. In addition to leading a lean core team, you will oversee a scalable contractor workforce that supports implementations worldwide, ensuring consistent execution, governance, and quality standards regardless of delivery location.

This is more than a people leadership role. You will establish the vision, operating model, and quality engineering practices that enable Professional Services to deliver reliable, repeatable, and efficient customer implementations. Working closely with Services Delivery, Product Engineering, Cloud Operations, Customer Success, and our India CoE, you'll champion an automation-first mindset, modern testing practices, and continuous improvement initiatives that enhance customer outcomes while improving delivery efficiency across the organization.

If you're passionate about building global teams, driving organizational transformation, and modernizing quality engineering at scale, this is an opportunity to shape how Ellucian delivers technology to higher education institutions around the world.

Where You Will Make an Impact

Global Quality Strategy & Leadership

Define and execute the global Test & Quality Assurance strategy for Professional Services, aligning quality initiatives with organizational priorities and customer delivery goals.
Lead and develop a distributed team of Quality Engineers across the United States and Latin America, while providing functional leadership and strategic direction to quality resources within our India Center of Excellence.
Build a cohesive global quality organization that operates consistently across multiple regions, balancing centralized governance with regional execution.
Manage and coordinate a flexible workforce that includes full-time employees and a global network of implementation partners and contractors supporting customer deployments.
Establish governance, standards, KPIs, and quality metrics that drive consistency, accountability, and continuous improvement across all delivery teams.
Foster a high-performing culture focused on collaboration, innovation, operational excellence, and customer success.

Quality Engineering & Automation

Drive the evolution of our Quality Engineering practice by championing automation-first testing strategies across the implementation lifecycle.
Define and implement enterprise testing frameworks utilizing technologies such as:
UI Automation (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium)
API Testing (Postman, REST Assured, SoapUI)
Performance Testing (JMeter, K6, Gatling)
Security Testing (OWASP ZAP or equivalent)
Develop reusable testing frameworks, accelerators, and best practices that improve delivery quality and implementation efficiency across global teams.
Partner with Engineering and DevOps teams to integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and modern delivery practices.
Establish scalable approaches for test data management, environment strategy, and quality governance across multiple implementation programs.

Delivery Excellence

Embed quality throughout the customer implementation lifecycle, ensuring testing is an integral part of delivery rather than a final validation step.
Partner with Professional Services leaders to standardize implementation quality across regions while maintaining flexibility to support customer-specific requirements.
Define operational dashboards and executive reporting that measure quality, automation maturity, implementation readiness, and customer delivery health.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives using customer feedback, delivery metrics, root cause analysis, and lessons learned.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Collaborate closely with Professional Services Delivery, Product Engineering, Cloud Operations, Customer Success, Product Management, and the India CoE to align quality objectives across the organization.
Influence cross-functional leaders to adopt modern quality engineering practices and automation strategies.
Serve as the executive point of contact for testing and quality assurance, providing strategic guidance on delivery risk, quality improvements, and operational readiness.
Build strong partnerships across global regions to ensure consistent execution, knowledge sharing, and continuous innovation.

What You Will Bring

Leadership Experience

10+ years of experience in Software Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering, or Software Testing.
5+ years leading geographically distributed engineering or quality teams.
Experience managing teams across multiple regions, including North America, Latin America, and/or India.
Demonstrated success leading both direct employees and contractor organizations in a global delivery environment.
Experience building scalable operating models and driving organizational transformation across international teams.

Technical Expertise

Deep expertise in modern Quality Engineering practices, automated testing frameworks, and enterprise testing strategies.
Hands-on experience with:
UI automation (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or similar)
API testing (Postman, REST Assured)
Performance testing (JMeter, K6, Gatling)
Test management and reporting platforms
Strong programming or scripting skills (JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, or Java).
Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern DevOps practices.

Professional Services Experience

Experience leading Quality Assurance or Quality Engineering within a Professional Services, Consulting, or SaaS implementation organization.
Strong understanding of enterprise software implementation methodologies and customer delivery lifecycles.
Experience developing repeatable testing and quality processes that scale across multiple customers, delivery teams, and geographies.
Higher education technology experience is preferred but not required.

Leadership Competencies

Strategic mindset with the ability to define vision, influence stakeholders, and execute through global teams.
Excellent communication, collaboration, and executive stakeholder management skills.
Proven ability to lead through influence within matrixed organizations, including dotted-line leadership relationships.
Strong organizational, analytical, and problem-solving capabilities.
Passion for coaching and developing talent while fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and operational excellence.