Product-Aligned Agentic Quality Engineering Lead (Automation …, Ernakulam

We are hiring a senior Quality Engineering leader who owns end-to-end quality, release sign-off, and automation strategy across our platform— including AI agents, web applications, APIs, and databases. This role blends: Quality Ownership Automation&Agentic Testing Leadership Release&Go-Live Authority Product-aligned execution (PO-style ownership) You will start by establishing strong manual and exploratory testing foundations, then systematically drive automation-first quality, including AI agent validation, critic agents, eval frameworks, and safety guardrails. This is not a passive QA role.You are accountable for production quality. Key Responsibilities End-to-End Quality Ownership&Release Sign-Off Own quality outcomes across the full delivery lifecycle Act as release authority, driving go/no-go decisions Define and enforce quality gates across features, agents, and releases Partner with Product and Engineering to balance speed and quality Reduce production defects through proactive automation and validationAutomation-First Quality Strategy Define and own the automation roadmap (UI, API, DB, agentic systems) Build and maintain hybrid automation frameworks using Python Drive CI/CD-integrated automated testing pipelines Ensure automation coverage continuously replaces repetitive manual testing Guide aligned Quality Engineers in automation implementationAgentic AI&LLM Quality Engineering Own quality for AI agents, tool calls, and multi-step workflows Validate: Agent behavior&reasoning paths Tool invocation correctness Hallucinations&unsafe outputs RAG accuracy and grounding Define and execute agent evaluation (evals) frameworks Collaborate with Critic Engineers to design: Critic agents Automated agent validation Benchmark datasets&scoring rubrics Lead innovation in agent testing methodologies Manual, Exploratory&Scenario-Based Testing Drive high-quality manual and exploratory testing where automation is not yet viable Design test scenarios covering edge cases, failure modes, and real-world flows Ensure strong test data strategies and defect lifecycle management Use manual testing strategically— not as a long-term crutchProduct-Aligned Ownership Work as a quality-focused Product Owner partner Align closely with Product Managers on acceptance criteria and readiness Participate in sprint planning, refinement, and release discussions Ensure quality is embedded into feature design, not added later Cross-Team CollaborationWork closely with: Product Engineering AgenticOps RAG&AI teams Act as the single quality voice across delivery discussions Mentor and guide aligned Quality Engineers and contributors Required Skills&Experience Quality&Manual Testing 5+ years of strong hands-on experience in manual and exploratory testing Deep understanding of SDLC/STLC, test planning, traceability, and defect management Strong API testing experience (Postman, REST clients) Automation (UI, API, Database) Strong experience in: UI automation (Playwright / Selenium / Cypress)API automation (pytest, requests, REST Assured) Database validation using SQL Experience designing end-to-end automation frameworks CI/CD integration (GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins) Agentic AI&LLM Testing Hands-on experience testing LLMs and AI agents Understanding of: Agent workflows Tool calling RAG pipelines Guardrails&safety validation Experience designing or executing eval frameworks Python, MCP&Cloud Strong Python skills for automation, utilities, and validation Understanding of MCP servers, agent tools, and orchestration Cloud exposure (GCP / AWS / Azure) in QA or automation contexts What Success Looks Like Releases go out predictably and confidently Automation coverage grows sprint after sprintAgent failures are caught before production Quality becomes a shared responsibility, led by you Manual testing effort reduces as automation and agent critics mature Why This Role Is Special Owns release sign-off Drives automation-first quality Shapes how agentic AI is tested Works closely with Product&CTO Leads innovation in AI testing Not a test executor role Not a checkbox QA position