Manager, SW Engineering (QE)

Job description

Our Mission At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place. Who We Are In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us! We believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes. Job Summary Manager, Quality Engineering (QE)Position OverviewWe are seeking an experienced Manager, Quality Engineering (QE) to lead our quality engineering organization and drive a scalable, automation-first approach to software quality. This role will be responsible for defining and executing the overall quality strategy, managing release readiness, strengthening system and integration testing, expanding test automation, and introducing tools and processes that improve engineering efficiency and product quality. The ideal candidate is a strong technical leader who can balance technical leadership, quality strategy, test engineering, release management, and cross-functional collaboration. You will work closely with Engineering, Product, DevOps/SRE, and other stakeholders to ensure reliable and high-quality releases across complex systems and services. Key ResponsibilitiesQuality Engineering Strategy Define and drive the overall QE strategy, quality roadmap, and engineering quality standards across products and platforms. Establish risk-based testing practices covering functional, regression, integration, system, performance, reliability, and end-to-end testing. Promote a shift-left and automation-first quality culture across engineering teams. Develop comprehensive test strategies for new features, services, platforms, and major architectural changes. Establish appropriate testing approaches across unit, API, integration, system, UI, end-to-end, performance, and reliability testing. Ensure adequate test coverage for critical business workflows and system dependencies. Lead test planning for complex projects involving multiple services, teams, and technology stacks. Improve test environments, test data management, and test execution processes. Release Management & Quality Governance Own the QE component of the software release lifecycle, including release planning, test readiness, defect triage, release validation, and production readiness. Establish release quality gates and clear entry/exit criteria for testing. Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to assess release risks and communicate quality status. Drive post-release validation, production quality monitoring, and continuous improvement based on production issues. System Integration & End-to-End Testing Lead the strategy and execution of system integration and end-to-end testing across interconnected applications, services, APIs, and third-party systems. Define integration test frameworks and approaches for distributed and service-oriented architectures. Identify dependencies and integration risks across engineering teams. Establish automated validation of critical customer and business workflows. Partner with architecture and engineering teams to improve system testability and observability. Test Automation Drive the development and adoption of scalable test automation frameworks and infrastructure. Establish automation strategies across UI, API, integration, regression, and end-to-end testing. Increase automation coverage while improving test reliability, execution speed, and maintainability. Reduce flaky tests and improve the signal-to-noise ratio of automated test suites. Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and engineering workflows. Evaluate and introduce modern testing tools, frameworks, and technologies where they provide measurable value. Engineering Efficiency & Quality Tools Identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity through QE tooling, automation, and intelligent test execution. Build or sponsor internal tools that reduce manual testing, accelerate releases, and improve developer feedback loops. Improve test execution time through parallelization, selective testing, test impact analysis, and other optimization techniques. Establish reusable testing libraries, frameworks, utilities, and best practices across teams. Continuously evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted testing and quality engineering tools, where appropriate. Team Leadership Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of Quality Engineers and Test Automation Engineers. Establish technical direction, engineering standards, and career development plans for the QE organization. Recruit and retain strong QE talent and build an environment of ownership and continuous improvement. Balance hands-on technical leadership with effective people and organizational management. Foster strong collaboration between QE, Software Engineering, Product, DevOps/SRE, and other technical teams. Continuous Improvement Analyze production defects, escaped issues, and testing gaps to identify systemic improvements. Establish root-cause analysis and corrective-action practices for significant quality issues. Use data and metrics to continuously improve test effectiveness and release confidence. Drive improvements in development processes, testability, observability, and quality ownership across engineering. Required QualificationsBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience. 8+ years of experience in software quality engineering, test engineering, automation, or related software engineering roles. 3+ years of experience managing or leading QE/Test Engineering teams. Strong experience developing and implementing test strategies and quality engineering processes. Proven experience with test automation frameworks and CI/CD integration. Strong understanding of API, integration, system, regression, and end-to-end testing. Experience managing software releases and release quality gates. Experience testing distributed systems, microservices, APIs, cloud applications, or other complex systems. Strong understanding of modern software development and CI/CD practices. Excellent analytical, problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills. Preferred QualificationsExperience building or scaling QE organizations. Experience with cloud-native architectures and distributed systems. Experience with performance, scalability, reliability, and resilience testing. Experience building internal QE tooling and test infrastructure. Experience with test data management and environment automation. Experience with observability and production quality monitoring. Experience applying AI/ML or intelligent automation to software testing. Strong programming/scripting experience in languages such as Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar. Success in This RoleSuccess in this role will be measured by the organization's ability to: Deliver releases with greater quality, predictability, and confidence. Increase meaningful automated test coverage. Reduce regression testing time and manual testing effort. Improve system and integration test coverage. Reduce esca