Director of Quality Assurance

ABOUT US  

Xsolla is a global video game commerce company that provides a comprehensive suite of tools and services for game developers and publishers - including payments, distribution, game stores, launcher solutions, and partner network services. Our platform processes transactions across 200+ geographies, supporting thousands of games and millions of players worldwide. Quality is not optional - it is foundational to every product we ship.

ROLE OVERVIEW

The Director of QA is a senior technical leadership role responsible for owning and scaling Xsolla's quality engineering function across multiple product lines, teams, and time zones. You will define and drive the strategic vision for quality assurance - from test automation architecture and CI/CD integration to AI-assisted testing practices and performance engineering. You will lead a distributed organization of 30+ QA engineers and leads as part of a broader QA organization of 75+ professionals, ensuring predictable, high-quality releases across every product Xsolla delivers. This is not a management-only position. You must be deeply technical - capable of reviewing automation code, architecting test frameworks, debugging CI/CD pipelines, and evaluating AI-driven testing approaches hands-on.  

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Ownership

• Define and execute the QA strategy across all Xsolla products, aligning quality objectives with business goals and product roadmaps.

• Own QA deliverables end-to-end - from test planning through release sign-off - and be accountable for outcomes, not just activities.

• Establish and enforce quality gates, defect governance policies, and release readiness criteria across all product teams.

• Drive organizational maturity: evolve the QA function from reactive testing to proactive quality engineering embedded in every stage of the SDLC.

• Represent QA at the executive level - articulate quality risks, tradeoffs, and resource needs to VP/C-level stakeholders with clarity and data.


Technical Excellence

• Architect and oversee enterprise-grade test automation frameworks spanning UI (Playwright), API, database validation (SQL), and performance testing (K6).

• Define and maintain standards for test code quality - including code reviews, PR contributions, reusable libraries, and modular test design.

• Deep understanding of Git workflows - branching strategies, merge request reviews, repository hygiene, and code versioning best practices across multiple repositories.

• Expert-level knowledge of CI/CD pipelines - design, optimize, and troubleshoot automated build, test, and deployment pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar).

• Ensure all automation is fully integrated into CI/CD pipelines, with clear pass/fail signals, automated regression gates, and performance benchmarks at every release stage.

• Drive adoption of infrastructure-as-code practices for test environments - containerized test execution, ephemeral environments, and environment parity between staging and production.

• Evaluate, select, and implement QA tooling - including test management platforms (Qase), observability tools, and defect tracking integrations.


AI Integration & Innovation

• Proven track record of using AI in day-to-day QA activities - not aspirational, but demonstrated. You have used AI tools to generate test cases, write automation code, analyze test results, identify flaky tests, or accelerate debugging.

• Champion and operationalize AI-assisted quality engineering across the organization - specifically using Claude AI for code generation, test design, automation scripting, and documentation.

• Define governance frameworks for AI-generated test artifacts - validation, review, and sign-off processes to ensure AI outputs meet quality standards.

• Stay current with AI/ML advancements relevant to testing - intelligent test selection, predictive defect analysis, autonomous test generation, and self-healing automation.

• Establish metrics to measure the impact of AI adoption on QA velocity, coverage, and defect detection rates.


Team Leadership & People Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop a distributed team of 30+ QA professionals - including QA Leads, Senior QA Engineers, and QA Engineers - across multiple time zones (Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific).

• Build a high-performance culture rooted in ownership, technical excellence, continuous learning, and psychological safety.

• Conduct regular 1:1s, career development conversations, and performance reviews. Identify and grow future QA leaders.

• Design and implement onboarding programs, skill development paths, and technical training curricula - including AI literacy for all QA team members.

• Manage resource allocation and capacity planning across multiple concurrent projects, ensuring predictable and sustainable QA delivery.

• Navigate cross-cultural team dynamics with sensitivity and effectiveness - a truly global team requires a global leadership mindset.


Process Rigor & Quality Governance

• Enforce rigorous QA processes across the organization:  • Test case management: Create, maintain, and execute comprehensive test cases in Qase with full traceability (pass, fail, blocked statuses).

• Bug documentation: Ensure all staging bugs are filed with detailed reproduction steps, expected vs. actual behavior, environment details, screenshots/videos, and severity classification - following established training standards.

• Automation framework documentation: Maintain clear, up-to-date documentation for all automation frameworks, ensuring any engineer can onboard and contribute.

• QA Score: Drive iterative improvements in QA Score metrics - tracking automation coverage, defect escape rate, test execution velocity, and regression stability.

• Define and track QA KPIs and OKRs - present quality dashboards and trend analysis to leadership regularly.

• Conduct root cause analysis on production escapes and implement systemic corrective actions.


Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps, and Release Management to embed quality practices into every phase of the development lifecycle.

• Work effectively in Agile/Scrum environments - participate in and drive sprint planning, retrospectives, daily stand-ups, and release ceremonies.

• Act as the primary QA stakeholder for cross-functional initiatives - environment strategy, deployment automation, incident response, and post-mortem processes.

• Build strong relationships with engineering leadership to ensure QA is not a bottleneck but an accelerator.

Common Expectations Across All QA Roles

• Must be technical and able to write code for testing and automation.

• Use Claude AI to assist in code creation, automation, and test design.

• Follow QA processes rigorously: create and execute robust test cases in Qase, maint