What will you do?

Job Purpose:

To transform software quality at Sanlam by building a modern, enterprise‑wide Quality Engineering capability that replaces manual testing with automation‑first, continuous quality practices. The role establishes a cluster‑wide Testing Guild, and applies cloud‑native, data‑ and AI‑assisted quality insights to accelerate delivery, improve platform resilience, and strengthen regulatory assurance - starting with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM).

Role Requirements:

Output/Core Tasks:

Quality Engineering Strategy & Governance

• Define and lead Sanlam’s enterprise Quality Engineering (QE) strategy, setting standards, patterns and quality gates across the software delivery lifecycle
• Establish a cluster‑wide QE Guild to drive consistency, reuse, and skills uplift across CIO portfolios and product teams.
• Embed risk‑based quality governance, ensuring testing depth and evidence are proportionate to business, regulatory, and operational risk.
• Partner with Architecture, Security, Risk, and Compliance to ensure quality practices support regulatory assurance and audit readiness.

Automation‑First & Continuous Testing

• Drive the shift from manual testing to automation‑first, continuous quality practices embedded in CI/CD pipelines.
• Define and standardise test automation approaches across API, UI, integration, performance, security, and regression testing.
• Ensure testing is self‑service and developer‑enabled, with clear quality gates aligned to release and go/no‑go decisions.
• Improve key flow and reliability outcomes (e.g. defect escape, change failure rate, lead time for change).
• Institutionalize continuous testing practices (quality gates, dashboards, evidence, and test data strategies) to reduce time-to-market and incident risk.

Platform & Cloud‑Native Quality (Dynamics 365 Focus)

• Establish testing blueprints and standards for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM), including: 
  o    Customisations and configurations
  o    Integration and API testing
  o    Security, role‑based access, and data integrity
  o    Regression and release validation
• Define environment and test‑data strategies to support cloud‑native and integration‑heavy architectures, including service virtualisation where required.
• Provide hands‑on quality leadership for priority CRM releases and programmes.

Data‑ and AI‑Assisted Quality Insights

• Introduce data‑driven quality analytics to provide visibility into release readiness, risk, and quality trends.
• Apply AI‑assisted testing techniques (e.g. customizations, integrations, security/roles, data quality, regression packs) with clear guardrails, change control, and auditability; start with lowrisk domains and scale as maturity grows.  
• Stand up quality analytics (flow metrics, defect economics, predictive risk signals) to inform release decisions and leadership reporting. 
• Translate quality signals into actionable insights for engineering leaders and CIO forums.

Capability Build & Operating Model

• Build and mature a QE Guild, including service offerings, standards, enablement, and communities of practice.
• Reduce reliance on external contractors by uplifting internal QE capability across squads and platforms.
• Define role profiles, learning paths, and career progression for QE, Software Development Engineer in Test, and automation engineers.
• Coach and influence engineering teams to treat quality as a shared responsibility, not a downstream activity.

Delivery Oversight & Risk Management

• Provide program level QA leadership for priority releases (esp. Dynamics CRM), ensuring coverage across functional, integration, performance, and security, with go/nogo criteria and quality signoffs.  
• Champion continuous improvement via postrelease analytics, production incident linkage, and defectescape/rootcause programs.
• Provide program level QA leadership for priority releases (esp. Dynamics CRM), ensuring coverage across functional, integration, performance, and security, with go/nogo criteria and quality signoffs.  
• Champion continuous improvement via post release analytics, production incident linkage, and defect escape/root cause programs.

What will make you successful in this role?

Experience

Essential:

• 8–12 years in QA/QE or software testing, with 3–5 years leading enterprise QA/QE or CoE functions.  
• Demonstrated success implementing automation first, continuous testing integrated with CI/CD (Azure DevOps or equivalent), including API/UI/contract/performance/security test stacks.  
• Strong background in cloud native testing (microservices, event driven, integration) and environment strategy (test data, virtualization, ephemeral envs).  
• Track record using quality analytics (DORA metrics, risk based prioritization, release readiness dashboards).  
• Proven experience implementing automation‑first testing using modern toolchains such as GitHub/GitHub Actions and/or Azure DevOps, and automation frameworks such as Playwright and/or Selenium with strong API testing capability (e.g., Postman or equivalent).

Advantageous

• Hands on experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM) or similar enterprise CRM platforms (Salesforce), including customization/integration test strategies and UAT orchestration in Azure DevOps.  
• Familiarity with AI assisted testing and responsible AI guardrails in engineering workflows.  
• Exposure to reliability/operations practices (e.g., SRE concepts, quality gates, progressive delivery), aligning quality signals to release decisions.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.
• Relevant certifications (preferred): 
• ISTQB Advanced/Test Manager or equivalent QE certification.
• Microsoft: Azure (e.g., AZ 400 DevOps Engineer, Azure Fundamentals/Administrator) to support Azure DevOps and cloud testing adoption.  
• AWS: Foundational/Associate/Professional or DevOps Engineering on AWS for cloud native test practices; AWS training on advanced testing in CI/CD. 
• Agile/SAFe or equivalent delivery credentials.

Competencies

Technical:

• Automation Engineering: Designs robust, scalable frameworks (API/UI/contract/perf/sec) with pipeline integration and test data strategies.  
• Continuous Testing & DevOps: Builds quality gates and traceability using Azure DevOps (Boards ↔ Repos ↔ Pipelines ↔ Test Plans). 
• Cloud Native Quality: Proficient in testing microservices, event streams, and integrations; leverages ephemeral environments and service virtualization.  
• AI Assisted QE & Analytics: Applies AI for test design/prioritization and maintenance with controls, audit trails, and value tracking; operationalizes quality metrics to inform release decisions.
• Dynamics 365 Testing: Defines CRM specific test strategies (security/roles, data model, integration flows) with end to end traceability for audits and UAT.  

Leadership:
  

• Strategic QE Transformation: Builds a TCoE and reduces contractor dependency through standards, enablement, and clear service catalogs.  
• Change Leadership & Influence: Shifts culture toward quality as a shared responsibility, partnering with CIOs, Product, Engineering, Architecture, and Security.  
• Talent Development: Grows internal SDET/QE capability; sets learning pathways (Azure DevOps, Dynamics, AI assisted testing, performance/security testing).  
• Outcome Focus: Uses objective quality signals to drive go/no go and reduce defect escape, change failure rate, and MTTR; ties quality to business outcomes.

Personal Attributes

Build a successful career with us

We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping  our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

Core Competencies

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers. 

Closing Date: 27 March 2026

Our commitment to transformation