Lead Prouduct Quality Assurance Engineer
lilly · United States, Indianapolis IN
At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.
Come build the next generation of Software Engineering, so we can reach and support more patients digitally!
Lilly's mission is to develop and maintain software products that meet the needs and requirements of both our internal and external customers. This typically involves a combination of activities such as gathering and analyzing user requirements, designing and implementing software solutions, testing and debugging code, and maintaining and improving the performance and reliability of software over time. The goal of software engineering at Lilly is to create high-quality, reliable, and effective software utilizing cutting-edge methodologies and integrations to solve Lilly's real-world problems and provide value to our customers.
The Role:
As a Quality Engineering Lead, you will own the end-to-end testing lifecycle for software products — from strategy through release — ensuring quality, reliability, and on-time delivery. You will anticipate and resolve complex problems across teams, lead and collaborate with professional peers and leadership, and make in-depth, data-informed decisions that drive quality outcomes across your product area.
You will partner closely with developers, product managers, and business analysts to define testing requirements, implement effective automation strategies, and accelerate delivery while reducing manual testing overhead. A critical part of this role is anticipating post-production risks driven by technology or environment changes, and working proactively with support teams to resolve them before they become production incidents.
You will lead a globally distributed QE team and will be expected to structure work, communication, and collaboration rhythms that keep the team aligned and progressing across time zones. Business and Development stakeholders are US-based, and depending on how the QE team is structured, you may at times be the primary — or only — QE presence during US business hours. You will be expected to lean in directly when the situation demands it.
You will also champion the Quality Engineering strategy across your products, driving test efficiency and speed through modern automation techniques and AI-assisted testing practices.
What You'll Be Doing:
Test Planning & Strategy
- Develop and document comprehensive test strategies and plans aligned with project goals, defining objectives, scope, deliverables, and success criteria — making in-depth decisions informed by analysis across your team and multiple delivery teams.
- Identify required testing types and plan resources, schedules, and tooling to support testing activities, anticipating risks and resource needs before they surface.
- Champion shift-left testing principles — engage early in the product development lifecycle to deeply understand how products are architected and built, not just what the requirements say. Use that understanding to surface testability gaps, design risks, and integration complexities before they reach execution.
Test Execution Management
- Oversee preparation and execution of test cases, ensuring thorough requirements coverage; monitor testing progress, enforce adherence to plan, and manage defect tracking, reporting, and resolution.
- Step in as a hands-on contributor when the situation requires it — particularly during deployments scheduled in US afternoon or evening windows where you may be the only QE resource available. This includes executing smoke and regression test suites, making real-time go/no-go assessments, and clearly communicating any critical blockers to development and release teams.
- Define and track key performance indicators — defect density, test coverage, execution rates — and present quality trend reports to stakeholders, using metrics to drive data-informed decisions on release readiness.
Test Automation Leadership
- Lead the design, development, and maintenance of test automation frameworks, applying comprehensive technical expertise to improve testing products, processes, and services.
- Balance manual and automated testing based on project context and risk profile; guide teams through technical solutioning and course-correct implementations when needed.
- Drive continuous testing integration within CI/CD pipelines, contributing to modern engineering practices across teams.
Stakeholder Communication, Collaboration & Test Coordination
- Lead and collaborate with professional peers and leadership across teams — serving as the primary point of contact for all testing-related queries and providing regular updates on test progress, metrics, and results to project managers and product owners.
- Coordinate cross-team System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) — among the most complex and high-stakes activities in the delivery cycle. Align schedules, entry and exit criteria, test environments, and stakeholder readiness across multiple teams to drive these phases to successful completion.
- Plan and manage working model overlaps for a distributed team — deliberately schedule collaboration windows, stand-ups, and critical reviews that provide meaningful coverage across time zones, ensuring no segment of the team operates in isolation or becomes a delivery bottleneck.
- Escalate critical issues and risks to appropriate stakeholders promptly and clearly; anticipate and address customer needs across internal teams to maintain delivery momentum.
Risk & Issue Management
- Anticipate and resolve complex testing-phase risks early — develop structured mitigation strategies that address root causes, not just symptoms, with impact across teams.
- Track and resolve critical issues before release, proactively clearing bottlenecks and dependency conflicts; lead resolution efforts and communicate outcomes with clarity and accountability.
What You Should Bring:
Technical Expertise
- Comprehensive knowledge of software testing disciplines — functional, regression, integration, performance, and exploratory — with the depth to improve testing processes and services across products.
- Proficiency in test management tools such as TestRail, XRay, Qtest, or Quality Center.
- Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks — Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, or Puppeteer — with the ability to guide teams through technical solutioning, unblock scripting issues, and course-correct implementations.
- Working knowledge of GitHub and CI/CD tooling (GitHub Actions or Jenkins).
- Strong understanding of AI in testing and a demonstrated ability to drive AI adoption within QE practices.
Process & Methodology
- Proven experience leading end-to-end testing lifecycles (STLC) within Agile delivery models, with the ability to make decisions that positively impact work across multiple teams.
- Strong knowledge of SDLC and Agile practices, with hands-on experience using Agile planning tools such as Jira.
- Demonstrated ability to apply shift-left principles — contributing to design reviews, architecture discussions, and sprint planning to embed quality from the start.
- Ability to align testing strategy with business goals and delivery commitments, establishing key relationships with stakeholders outside the immediate business area.
Leadership & Communication
- Leads and collaborates with professional peers and leadership across teams — strong interpe