Quality Engineering Manager

At our company, we are dedicated to making a meaningful impact in the insurance sector, extending our service beyond mere coverages and policies. Join our dynamic team where your goals and the goals of others can thrive.

As a Quality Engineering Manager focused on Claims and Reinsurance, you will play a pivotal leadership role in advancing engineering discipline and software quality across our Claims IT landscape. This position involves leading Quality Engineering practices, coaching Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) and Value Stream Quality Leads (VSQLs), enhancing automation maturity, and fostering continuous improvement within Agile Release Trains that support our Claims applications—including Guidewire, Reinsurance, AI, and digital claims solutions.

The ideal candidate will possess extensive quality engineering expertise, proven coaching skills, and the capability to influence cross-functional teams in a scaled Agile environment.

This role offers a Hybrid work schedule, with a requirement to work in the office (Columbus, OH, Chicago, IL, Hartford, CT, or Charlotte, NC) three days a week (Tuesday through Thursday).

Responsibilities

Quality Leadership & Coaching:

Mentor and develop SDETs, enhancing their test design, automation practices, CI/CD integration, and shift-left quality methodologies.

Guide VSQLs to raise quality maturity, role consistency, and foundational quality engineering practices across value streams.

Promote a deconstructive testing mindset to effectively validate upstream and downstream business processes.

Quality Management & Governance:

Manage and evolve the Claims IT test management and defect management processes, ensuring comprehensive Rally documentation and clear entry/exit criteria.

Establish and maintain a coherent Quality Management framework encompassing people, processes, and technology.

Lead quality maturity assessments and convert the insights gained into actionable improvement plans at the PI level.

Test Engineering & Automation Excellence:

Advance in-sprint automation, end-to-end automation maturity, and optimization of regression strategies.

Guide efforts to optimize frameworks, including automated suite refactoring and best practices in automation tooling.

Ensure vendor SDETs meet Claims IT expectations and support innovative automated testing solutions.

Delivery Quality Oversight:

Act as the point of escalation for quality risks, defects, test coverage gaps, and concerns related to release readiness.

Collaborate with Reliability Engineering on root cause analysis (RCA) quality, mitigation actions, and operational enhancements.

Embed a consistent quality perspective in story refinement, feature planning, and delivery processes.

Metrics, Reporting & Insights:

Create and uphold dashboards at the ART level that track defect trends, automation progress, test coverage, and reporting metrics.

Utilize data-driven coaching to improve defect detection and injection ratios, alongside automation coverage.

Leverage code commit and productivity insights to promote better engineering discipline throughout teams.

Cross-Functional Partnership:

Work closely with Release Train Engineers (RTEs), Agile Product Managers (APMs), Tech Leads, Architecture, and Vendor Partners, ensuring quality is integrated throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Support modernization initiatives (cloud, digital transformations, platform upgrades) with appropriate test engineering strategies.

Cultivate a culture that emphasizes learning, coaching, continuous improvement, and cross-team collaboration.

Qualifications

Required:

7+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Software Testing, or Test Automation.

Required Bachelor's Degree.

Proven experience managing and developing a team of Quality Engineers, including coaching and performance management.

3+ years of experience coaching or managing SDETs/QE professionals within an Agile framework.

Strong knowledge of Claims systems, workflows, or Property & Casualty insurance technology.

Hands-on experience with automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Development (TDD), and test strategy formulation.

Validated success in enhancing engineering quality metrics (e.g., defect density, automation %, DDP).

Excellent communication, influencing, and leadership skills; capable of coaching without formal authority.

Preferred:

Familiarity with Guidewire, Reinsurance platforms, or Claims modernization projects.

Experience within the Insurance Domain.

Preferred Master’s Degree.

Experience using Rally, Playwright, UTF, or comparable test engineering tools.

Background in Scaled Agile (SAFe) environments.

Exposure to cloud modernization or DevOps transformation efforts.

Candidate must be authorized to work in the US without company sponsorship. The company will not support the STEM OPT I-983 Training Plan endorsement for this position.

Compensation:

The annualized base pay range for this role is $133,200 - $199,800, primarily based on an analysis of similar positions in the external market. Actual base pay may vary based on performance, proficiency, and demonstration of the competencies required for the role. This base pay is just one component of the overall compensation package at The Hartford, which includes potential bonuses and other incentives.

Equal Opportunity Employer: We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We celebrate differences and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Every day presents a new opportunity to make a positive impact.

We continuously seek innovative ways to serve our customers, communities, and employees, always asking what we can do better.

Join us and become part of our ongoing mission.