Senior Manager, Test Engineering- Networking background is a must

This is a high-impact leadership role responsible for defining the quality strategy, driving automation and test infrastructure investments, and partnering closely with Product Management, Engineering, DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, Security, Release Engineering, and Support teams to ensure high standards of reliability, scalability, security, and customer trust.

The role requires a strong understanding of cloud applications and distributed systems, along with good networking and security fundamentals. You will help shape how quality is built into the product lifecycle, from requirements and architecture reviews through continuous testing, release readiness, production validation, and post-release improvements.

Key Responsibilities

Quality Strategy & Release Ownership

• Define and continuously improve QA and Quality Engineering strategy for cloud applications and cloud security products.
• Establish quality gates, entry/exit criteria, and release readiness standards.
• Drive risk-based testing and shift-left quality practices.
• Define test strategies for new features, platform changes, integrations, maintenance releases, and hotfixes.
• Own QA release readiness and provide quality recommendations for go/no-go decisions.
• Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to identify and mitigate quality risks.

Cloud, Security & Networking Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership across cloud applications, distributed services, and cloud security solutions.
• Define comprehensive testing strategies covering:
• Functional and end-to-end customer workflows
• REST APIs and microservices
• Service-to-service communication
• Authentication and authorization
• Cloud networking and connectivity
• DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, TLS/SSL, proxies, and load balancing
• Security policies and controls
• Multi-tenant environments
• High availability, resiliency, and disaster recovery
• Upgrades, migrations, and backward compatibility
• Review PRDs, technical specifications, and architecture proposals from quality, security, scalability, reliability, and networking perspectives.
• Drive security and negative testing to validate abuse cases, misconfigurations, authorization boundaries, and threat scenarios.

Automation, CI/CD & Test Infrastructure

• Define the automation vision across UI, API, integration, security, and end-to-end testing.
• Establish measurable automation coverage and effectiveness goals.
• Build scalable and maintainable automation frameworks in partnership with engineering and automation teams.
• Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Drive improvements in automation stability and reduce flaky tests.
• Promote continuous testing and automated quality gates.
• Define the strategy for cloud-based test environments and test infrastructure.
• Partner with DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure teams on environment availability, scalability, and reliability.
• Explore AI and intelligent automation to improve test effectiveness and engineering productivity.

Performance, Scalability & Reliability

• Define strategies for performance, scalability, resiliency, and long-duration testing.
• Drive testing for high transaction volumes, concurrent users, API scalability, service interactions, resource utilization, failover, recovery, and scaling.
• Establish performance and reliability benchmarks for major releases.
• Partner with Engineering and Cloud Infrastructure teams to identify performance and scalability risks.

Execution Excellence & Metrics

• Own and track key quality metrics including:
• Defect leakage and escape rate
• Regression effectiveness
• Automation coverage and ROI
• Automation flakiness
• Release quality and predictability
• Production incident trends
• Customer-impacting defects
• Lead release readiness and quality reviews with senior stakeholders.
• Drive root cause analysis for production escapes and systemic quality gaps.
• Convert production and customer learnings into preventive quality improvements.

People Leadership & Stakeholder Influence

• Build, mentor, and retain a strong QA organization comprising leads and senior engineers.
• Lead and scale geographically distributed QA/Quality Engineering teams.
• Set clear expectations, career paths, technical growth plans, and performance goals.
• Develop technical and leadership capabilities within the QA organization.
• Influence Engineering, Product Management, DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, and Security leadership to prioritize quality and customer impact.
• Represent QA in leadership forums, customer escalations, incident reviews, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Foster a culture of ownership, engineering excellence, automation, and continuous improvement.

Required Skills & Experience

• 10–12+ years of experience in software QA/Quality Engineering, with 4+ years in QA leadership or people management.
• Strong experience testing cloud applications, SaaS products, distributed systems, or cloud security products.
• Good understanding of cloud, networking, and security fundamentals.
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, TLS/SSL, routing, load balancing, proxies, VPNs, and network security concepts.
• Understanding of cloud networking concepts such as VPC/VNet, subnets, security groups, firewalls, and private/public connectivity.
• Strong understanding of APIs, microservices, distributed systems, authentication, and authorization.
• Experience owning quality for complex software releases.
• Proven experience managing and developing QA teams.
• Strong automation and CI/CD experience.
• Experience with performance, scalability, resiliency, and reliability testing.
• Good understanding of security testing and secure software development practices.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder-management skills.

Good to Have

• Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with SaaS and multi-tenant applications.
• Experience testing cloud security or cybersecurity products.
• Experience with Kubernetes, containers, and cloud-native architectures.
• Exposure to security testing and vulnerability assessment.
• Exposure to SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, FIPS, or similar compliance programs.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, logging, and production diagnostics.
• Experience handling customer escalations and production incident RCA.
• Experience using AI/ML for test automation, test generation, defect analysis, or quality engineering.

What Success Looks Like

• Predictable, high-quality cloud application and cloud security releases.
• Reduced critical customer issues and production escapes.
• Measurable improvement in automation coverage and test effectiveness.
• Faster feedback cycles through shift-left testing and CI/CD integration.
• Improved application scalability, resilience, and production reliability.
• Strong security and quality practices embedded throughout the SDLC.
• Strong QA leadership and technical talent development.
• Improved engineering productivity through automation and modern Quality Engineering practices.
• Increased customer trust through reliable, secure, and high-quality cloud products.

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SonicWall is an equal opportunity employer.

We are committed to creating a diverse environment and are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

At SonicWall, we pride ourselves on recruiting a diverse mix of talented people and providing active security solutions in 100+ countries.

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