Head of QA (Product Quality)

We are looking for a Head of Quality Engineering to own product-level quality for Happy Color and lead the transformation from predominantly manual testing toward a measurable Quality Engineering function. This is not a role focused on coordinating a manual QA pool.

Key Responsibilities:

Product quality ownership

• Own the product-level quality strategy and its implementation roadmap.

• Define release-readiness criteria and provide an independent assessment of product quality.

• Take responsibility for acceptance testing of the product as a whole.

• Validate cross-domain flows across mobile clients, backend services, analytics, advertising, consent, payments, and other integrations.

• Identify systemic product risks that cannot be detected within a single engineering domain.

• Require teams to improve builds, test results, documentation, or other quality artifacts when they do not meet agreed standards.

Quality Engineering transformation

• Lead the transition from predominantly manual testing toward a balanced Quality Engineering model.

• Build sustainable E2E and regression automation for critical product scenarios.

• Introduce quality gates into CI/CD pipelines.

• Improve test environments, test data, reporting, and automation stability.

• Introduce risk-based testing, shift-left practices, and appropriate AI-assisted QA tools.

• Reduce regression time and release uncertainty without sacrificing product quality.

Product Quality team leadership

• Build and lead the Product Quality team responsible for: product acceptance;

• critical regression;

• E2E testing;

• user-experience validation;

• E2E and regression automation.

• Hire, develop, and mentor manual QA, automation, and SDET engineers.

• Assess existing QA engineers and define appropriate development paths based on skills, motivation, and demonstrated results.

• Establish clear ownership, expectations, and measurable outcomes for every team member.

Matrix quality leadership

• Coordinate the quality function across Backend QA, Client QA, and other QA.

• Work with engineering leaders to ensure that component-level testing is completed before Product Quality acceptance.

• Establish common quality standards, metrics, and audit practices across QA teams.

• Conduct regular quality reviews and identify gaps in domain-level testing.

• Ensure that standards reflect the needs of all QA directions rather than one specific platform or domain.

• Act as the technical owner of QA standards or appoint and support an appropriate Quality Engineering Technical Lead.

Data-driven quality management

• Define and monitor meaningful quality indicators, including: escaped defects;

• critical regression coverage;

• automation stability and flaky-test rate;

• regression duration;

• release-blocking defects;

• defects at system boundaries;

• production and support trends.

• Use analytics, support cases, incidents, and production signals to identify areas requiring additional coverage.

• Present product-quality risks and improvement progress to engineering and product leadership.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in QA or Quality Engineering.

• 3+ years in a QA leadership or Quality Engineering leadership role.

• Strong product mindset, with the ability to identify user, business, and systemic risks—not just verify compliance with documented requirements.

• Proven experience transforming manual testing into an engineering-driven quality function.

• Experience building or significantly improving E2E and regression automation.

• Strong understanding of test automation architecture, CI/CD integration, test environments, and quality gates.

• Ability to review automation approaches, framework architecture, code quality, and engineering practices.

• Experience testing high-scale mobile applications or games.

• Strong knowledge of: mobile application testing;

• backend and API testing;

• distributed and cross-system scenarios;

• analytics validation, including Firebase;

• databases and SQL-based platforms;

• advertising and attribution systems such as Adjust or AppsFlyer;

• release and production quality management.

• Experience working with Android Studio, Xcode, Charles Proxy or similar tools, API clients, and mobile automation frameworks.

• Strong leadership skills and the ability to influence teams in a matrix structure.

• Ability to make difficult quality decisions and clearly explain product risks.

• Russian — fluent.

• English — Intermediate or higher.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with ad-driven mobile products.

• Experience testing monetization, consent, GDPR/CCPA, payments, or analytics.

• Experience building SDET or automation teams.

• Experience applying AI tools to testing, test design, defect analysis, or QA operations.

• Experience working with incident, support, and production data.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary and benefits package.

• Opportunity to work with a talented and passionate team in a creative and dynamic environment.

• Flexible working hours and remote/office work options.

• Career growth and professional development opportunities.

• A fun and inclusive company culture that celebrates diversity and creativity.

Join us and let’s create great content together!