Quality Assurance Practice Lead

At AIA, our promise is to help people live Healthier, Longer, Better Lives by encouraging them to make positive lifestyle changes one step at a time. Our firm belief is that by following our Operating Philosophy of doing the right thing, in the right way with the right people, the results will come. AIA Insurance for Life, Health and Wellbeing.

Why work in AIA Technology?

In the Technology team, we strive to be at the cutting edge of technology. By delivering agile and innovative tech solutions, we use our expertise and technical skills to help support the organisations strategic goals. We also provide a range of invaluable IT support services to our employees and distribution partners.

To support the Ascend 200 strategy, we have embarked on a significant multi-year investment portfolio. Under the Technology, Digital and Analytics (TDA) program of work we are accelerating our digitisation of customer and distribution channels, our adoption of Cloud and our focus on being a data-driven organisation.

Come join us as we transform our capabilities and drive simplification throughout our tech stack.

The opportunity:
The QA (Quality Assurance) Practice Lead is pivotal to successful delivery of AIA’s strategic initiatives having responsibility for overseeing and ensuring at an enterprise level all products and services delivered to NZ AIA’s customers are of the highest possible quality, through the management of all activities within the Testing and Release Practice.

The QA Practice Lead is responsible for embedding a strong testing and release practice, including frameworks, capability and a culture that promotes quality and value through transparency, continuous improvement, and collaboration.

More specifically, the QA Practice Lead will support the Head of Portfolio Delivery with the following:

- Develop and implement a robust Enterprise Quality Assurance Strategy and Roadmap, which includes end-to-end environment management and refreshes, test automation and release management best practices
- Ensure that Testing and Release processes and tools are fit for purpose, and executed with due regard to AIA’s risk appetite, legal, regulatory and conduct obligations.
- Develop a highly engaged and motivated workforce with a continuous improvement mindset.
- Supply and demand management of testing project resources across the portfolio.
- Define and evolve technical standards and best practice
- Develop a quality assurance delivery centre of excellence across both testing and release
- Embed agile ways of working with the aim of efficiency and speed to market

About the role:
Leadership and Team Management
- Provide continuous oversight of all key initiatives with a focus on supporting the QA practice to demonstrate doing the right thing in the right way.
- Drive a culture of high performance and continuous improvement within the team with a focus on risk management, compliance, continued learning and innovation.
- Track and control the financial expenditure of resources assigned to projects, maintain visibility of team workload and work with partners to onboard additional resource if demand requires

Quality Assurance Capability
- Participate in delivery across workstreams to solve complex problems that required the highest competency level as an expert or organizer of the necessary inputs
- Embed disciplines that promote good governance, collaboration amongst teams, transparency and traceability of key decisions.
- Instil rigour and discipline into the QA practice to ensure consistent results are achieved, and adherence to mandatory requirements across the delivery lifecycle are met.
- Instil a culture of continuous improvement, compliance and proactive risk identification and management.
- Continually review processes and practices to ensure that these remain fit for purpose and identify and implement improvement opportunities.
- Ensure that any capability problems impacting delivery are addressed working closely with the respective delivery manager, capability leads and your peers.
- Technical owner for assigned systems

Delivery Planning & Monitoring
- Scope management and estimation coordination for initiatives and changes
- Working with the product owner to drive prioritization decisions to achieve the best mix of feasibility, desirability, and viability.
- Work with the Portfolio Delivery Practice to ensure successful delivery of projects (time, budget & quality)
- Ensure all releases are well planned, structured and estimated using fit for purpose and best practice techniques

Continuous Improvement
- Continually review processes and practices to ensure they are fit for purpose. This includes collaborating with Technology, Finance, People & Culture, and the wider team to identify and implement initiatives to uplift culture, capability, and productivity.
- Provide regular reporting on outcomes from Post Implementation Reviews and Retrospectives that enable embedding a continuous improvement mindse