Senior Manager, Quality Engineering

About the role

You will own the end-to-end quality strategy for Sardine's agentic risk platform, ensuring that fraud prevention and AML operations meet the rigorous standards required by global financial institutions. This role involves leading a distributed quality engineering organization that spans web, mobile, and manual testing initiatives across multiple time zones. You will establish and enforce governance frameworks that make our quality practices credible, auditable, and aligned with the expectations of regulated banks. The hire will partner deeply with engineering, professional services, and customer teams to validate every product change and bank integration before release. You will drive incident response for quality issues, owning root cause analysis and defining preventative measures to avoid future occurrences. The role requires shaping an engineering culture where quality is non-negotiable and embedded into every stage of the delivery lifecycle. You will define and communicate clear acceptance criteria and quality gates so that stakeholders have confidence in each release. Ultimately, this position is responsible for maintaining the integrity of our testing processes and evidence so that customers trust our platform to secure and grow their businesses.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Own the end-to-end QA strategy for the platform and customer-facing delivery, managing a globally distributed team of QA engineers.
• Establish quality governance standards appropriate for regulated financial institutions, including test strategy, coverage metrics, release criteria, and audit-ready evidence.
• Lead incident response for quality-related issues, performing triage, root cause analysis, prevention planning, and structured post-incident communication.
• Partner with engineering to strengthen test automation, CI/CD release gating, and regression coverage for a high-throughput, real-time platform.
• Collaborate with Professional Services and Post-Sales teams to support UAT, structured acceptance testing, and integration validation for bank and enterprise deployments.
• Define and maintain documented test plans, coverage metrics, and release gates that provide transparent insight into quality status.
• Play a pivotal role in shaping an engineering culture that prioritizes quality, consistency, and continuous improvement across the organization.
• Ensure all quality processes generate credible, audit-ready evidence that supports compliance and regulatory examinations.
• Drive the adoption of metrics-driven quality KPIs to track performance, identify trends, and guide improvement initiatives.
• Build and mentor a high-performing QA organization across multiple time zones, fostering collaboration and accountability within a remote-first environment.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to align testing activities with product roadmaps, risk frameworks, and business objectives.
• Oversee manual and exploratory testing efforts to uncover edge cases that automated suites may not capture.
• Establish clear acceptance criteria and formal sign-off processes for every product change and bank integration.
• Contribute to the selection and optimization of testing tools, including test automation frameworks and CI integrations.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software quality, with at least 2 years managing QA or Quality Engineering teams.
• Demonstrated experience owning quality for a regulated domain such as banking, payments, or fintech, including familiarity with audit, UAT, and documented test governance.
• Strong quality engineering mindset that balances test automation, CI/CD gating, and coverage measurement with structured manual and exploratory testing.
• Hands-on experience building test automation using Cypress or similar tools to create reliable, maintainable test suites.
• Track record of building and leading high-performing, distributed teams across multiple time zones and cultural contexts.
• Metrics-driven approach with the ability to define, report on, and interpret quality KPIs to guide decision-making.
• Proven ability to work in a fast-paced, high-growth environment where priorities evolve rapidly.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for coordinating with engineering, product, and customer stakeholders.
• Deep commitment to process excellence, documentation, and the delivery of audit-ready quality evidence.
• Willingness to engage in hands-on testing, debugging, and validation alongside engineering teams when necessary.

Nice to have

• Experience with financial services compliance and regulatory expectations around risk and fraud.
• Background working with enterprise customers and complex integrations in banking or payment processing.

Practical notes

• This is a remote role based in the United States, allowing work from home, cafes, beaches, mountains, or any location that supports deep focus.
• Employment is full-time and eligible for benefits as outlined in the company policy.
• The role may require participation in meetings across various time zones, and flexibility is essential.
• Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship for this position.