Quality Assurance Lead at Virgin Active South Africa

Your Purpose...

• Is to “change people’s lives for the better through wellness”;
• We deliver social wellness experiences that enable people to meet their personal wellness goals, through holistic physical, mental nutritional and social wellbeing.
• As we transform into a Social Wellness Club, we’re redefining how we approach technology by building globally scalable solutions. A key part of this transformation is consolidating our core member engagement platform (our Mobile App and related services) under a central team. This team will own a unified codebase, enabling faster, more consistent feature rollouts across multiple countries. This same quality mindset must extend across our backend services, integrations, and supporting digital platforms.
• We’re looking for a Quality Assurance Lead to define, drive, and continuously improve quality engineering practices across our mobile applications, backend services, APIs, and integration platforms. You’ll be a hands-on technical leader, responsible for shaping test strategy, building and maintaining automated test coverage, improving release confidence, and embedding quality throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Working closely with Product Managers, Engineers, Engineering Leads, Designers, and Operations, you’ll help the team deliver high-quality, reliable, and scalable software across member-facing and internal platforms. You’ll combine strategic quality leadership with hands-on technical execution, using automation, observability, and production quality insights to reduce defects, increase delivery confidence, and improve the end-to-end customer experience.
• This role spans both mobile and integration/backend teams, with responsibility for quality across feature development, API and end-to-end automation, visual regression, cloud-based device/browser testing, release readiness, defect prevention, and production issue feedback loops.

Your Duties and Responsibilities...

Technical Execution

• Design, build, and maintain scalable automated test frameworks and suites across UI, API, integration, and end-to-end testing layers.
• Drive end-to-end automation across critical user journeys using appropriate automation frameworks and tooling for web and/or mobile platforms.
• Use browser, device, and mobile app testing platforms to enable reliable cloud-based testing across environments where appropriate.
• Implement and maintain visual regression coverage to detect unintended UI changes and improve release confidence.
• Use reporting and quality insight tooling to improve test result visibility, reporting quality, and actionable insight across test runs and release cycles.
• Contribute to API and service-level quality through strong automated testing practices for backend services and integrations.
• Help define and implement API test strategies, service contract validation, integration test coverage, and non-functional quality checks where appropriate.
• Collaborate with engineers to improve testability, automation hooks, environment stability, and CI/CD pipeline quality gates.
• Troubleshoot test failures, flaky tests, environment issues, and release blockers, driving practical solutions that improve team confidence and speed.
• Support test data management, test environment readiness, and automation reliability across multiple systems and platforms.

Operational Excellence

• Own quality visibility across delivery and production by incorporating monitoring, observability, crash reporting, and defect signals into test strategy, release decisions, and continuous improvement.
• Use production incidents, crash data, performance issues, and defect trends to refine test coverage and improve prevention of repeat issues.
• Support release validation, regression planning, defect triage, root cause analysis, and post-release quality reviews.
• Identify and drive improvements in release quality, defect leakage, test execution speed, and automation effectiveness.
• Establish measurable quality metrics, dashboards, and reporting that provide clear insight into quality health, risk, and delivery readiness.
• Balance delivery speed with quality, maintainability, and appropriate test coverage by applying sound judgment and risk-based decision-making.

Our Minimum Requirements...

We can’t live without…

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years of professional experience in software quality assurance / quality engineering, with strong hands-on experience leading quality practices across modern engineering teams.
• Proven experience operating as a hands-on QA Lead or senior quality engineering leader across both frontend/mobile and backend/integration environments.
• Strong experience designing and implementing automated testing strategies across UI, API, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing layers.
• Strong hands-on experience with end-to-end test automation frameworks and approaches for validating critical user journeys across web and/or mobile platforms.
• Experience with cloud-based browser, device, and/or mobile application testing platforms to support broad test coverage across environments.
• Experience with visual regression testing practices and tooling to detect unintended UI changes and improve release confidence.
• Experience with test reporting, test result visibility, and quality metrics frameworks that improve insight into test execution and release readiness.
• Strong understanding of API testing, backend/service validation, and integration testing approaches across distributed systems.
• Experience working with observability, monitoring, and production issue signals to improve test coverage, release decision-making, and quality outcomes.
• Strong knowledge of software delivery practices including CI/CD pipelines, test automation in build pipelines, release validation, and defect management.
• Strong understanding of SDLC quality ownership, including test strategy, shift-left testing, release readiness, production validation, and continuous improvement.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to identify risk early and drive practical quality improvements.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineers, product teams, and leadership on quality-related decisions.
• Proven ability to work effectively as a senior hands-on individual contributor while leading quality standards and ways of working across multiple teams.
• Experience with tools such as WebDriver or similar for end-to-end test automation.
• Experience with platforms such as BrowserStack or similar for cloud-based browser, device, and mobile app testing.
• Experience with tools such as Percy or similar for visual regression testing.
• Experience with Allure or similar reporting frameworks to improve test visibility, reporting, and release insight.
• Experience with tools such as New Relic, Sentry, or similar observability / monitoring platforms to incorporate production quality signals into testing and release practices.
• Experience testing mobile applications across Android and iOS ecosystems.
• Experience testing backend integrations, APIs, third-party services, and event-driven / distributed systems.
• Familiarity with performance, reliability, and non-functional testing practices.
• Experience improving test automation frameworks, test architecture, or engineering quality tooling at team or department level.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum delivery frameworks and quality practices in product-led engineering teams.
• Experience in consumer-facing digital products, subscription products, wellness, lifestyle, or marketplace platforms.
• Exposure to modern cloud environments, DevOps practices, and engineering observability patterns.

Core Interpersonal Skills:

• Emotional Intelligence- proven ability to anticipate the needs of others before they are voiced
• Active Listening- Able to genuinely hear concerns with the ability to defuse tense situations and ensuring members and staff feel heard and valued
• Cultural Awareness and Fluency- understand international norms, etiquette and diverse backgrounds to provide a welcoming environment for our international and VIP members
• Empathy – be able to understand, or and be aware of, someone else’s feelings especially during stressful situations, such as travel delays or billing disputes

Operational & leadership Skills Required:

• Attention to Detail, noticing the small things
• Resilience and Composure, be able to remain calm and optimistic under extreme pressure, during peak or periods or system failures
• Problem solving and conflict resolution – be able to turn challenges into opportunities by thinking and acting quickly to resolve issues before they impact a member’s experience
• Adaptability: be flexible to handle unpredictable shifts in processers, resource changes, last minute VIP guest arrivals, or sudden changes in event plans.
• Relatability – the capacity to connect with diverse stakeholders across all backgrounds
• Situational Awareness – constantly monitoring the environment to identify members who need support or help
• Curiosity- the ability to seek out and transform standard transactions into personalised stories and memorable experiences
• Time Management – the ability to efficiently meet stringent deadlines while maintaining a relaxed and unhurried demeanor for guests.
• Digital Fluency – must be proficient in new age technology and systems

Closing Date 27 May 2026