Sr. Director, Testing

Sr. Director, Testing

Country: United States of America

Santander US is undertaking a bold digital transformation. In the second half of 2024, Santander launched a new national, digital offering in the United States under the Openbank brand.

Openbank operates with a technological platform designed in-house at Santander that provides secure, easy, and simple best-in-class customer experience by combining functionality and design. It also offers an intuitive user experience with fintech pricing and the trust of a global bank. Today, Openbank serves more than two million customers across Europe (Spain, Portugal, Germany, and the Netherlands), and has €18 billion in deposits, more than any other digital bank on the continent.

The rollout of Openbank in the US market marks the first time Santander combines all its core, award-winning proprietary technology to deliver an innovative and secure cloud-based banking platform. The Openbank launch will accelerate Santander US’ execution against its profitable growth strategy, generating deposits to fund its leading auto franchise.

The Sr. Director, Testing leads the Quality Assurance team for Santander US and is accountable for driving the transformation of the Testing organization aligned to the vision of Santander’s Openbank launch and future roadmap. The position is the owner of the QA Testing Program and is responsible for the continuous improvement of the QA Testing Program including, but not limited to, test automation, test strategy development, testing leadership, talent development, and testing tool usage. The role negotiates staffing and testing delivery budgets in the delivery of test planning, test preparation and test execution activities in adherence to standards for system testing. The incumbent is accountable for all phases of testing for a project or release including (but not limited to) system integration testing, business acceptance testing, performance testing and ADA testing. The role is responsible for incorporating industry leading concepts and practices to ensure the most efficient and effective program; such as AI-driven test generation, cross-platform testing, end-to-end testing, cross-device testing, and shift-left testing.

S/he ensures the effective coordination of test planning and support, with required partners in the Business, CIO group, Infrastructure etc. The position acts as an advisor to the CIO and business partners, with the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels including C-suite to guide and co-create new testing processes and procedures that enable the delivery of the CBB strategies. The successful candidate will be a highly motivated, responsive and results orientated individual with exceptional technical skills, relationship development, communication skills, strong project, financial and management experience.

Job Description

• Designs, analyzes, and supports the company's information technology structure, systems, and processes.
• Acquires, designs, implements, and operates the company's information technology resources (e.g., computer hardware, operating systems, communications, software applications, data, databases, etc.). Deploys, acquires, maintains, and ensures security of information technology assets.
• Plans and tests processes to ensure compliance with system requirements, business objectives, security standards and other technical requirements.

Essential Functions/Responsibility Statements:

• Designs, drives, and implements a Testing Strategy aligned to the Bank’s Digital Transformation priorities and objectives
• Accountable for the budget forecasting, tracking and realization of financial efficiencies for the Testing organization
• Manages and supports multiple CIO testing teams.
• Owns vendor management for testing services provided to the Bank
• Accountable for leading and delivering testing automation to drive speed to market and efficiencies
• Accountable for selecting and implementing relevant testing tools aligned to the Digital Transformation
• Ensures testing coverage includes adherence to non functional requirements such as performance, response times, ADA.
• Ensures quality software is delivered to production – leakage of defects
• Accountable for creation, review and sign-off of testing documentation (e.g., test strategies, plans, schedule, cost estimates, test cases, dashboards, defect logs, test phase closure reports) and ensure all test artifacts adhere to testing standards and audit requirements.
• Leads a team that understands and communicates testing impact of scope changes / project change requests to the project management team both from a timeline/cost and a risk perspective.
• Accountable for participation with business and development teams for test case creation and test case execution. Ensures test teams meet project timelines and manage and support the team in creating reusable test assets for both manual and automated test scripts.
• Oversees daily defect / status calls to ensure defects are documented and tracked and defect fixes are retested in timely manner and report the status of test planning, test execution and defects via daily dashboard reporting to project team using standard test quality metrics.
• Adheres to KPIs associated to test coverage and defects identified in production and mitigates against future recurrence.
• Develops and manages operational processes that are consistent across the portfolio; ensure QA processes are incorporated into overall technology delivery practices and standards.
• Manages the integrated intake/demand/schedule and periodically perform risk assessments; communicate and negotiate testing timelines, budget, staffing, scope, and critical milestones with project managers.
• Manage business partner relationships to build knowledge of their business, applications, and corresponding IT applications.
• Acts as a consultant / resource to other areas of IT and the Business; promote and develop awareness of testing methodologies and standards.
• Accountable for team adherence to prescribed testing processes, ensuring timely notification of issues/problems, review escalated risks and issues, work with stakeholders to develop contingency plans, resolve risks, and escalate further as necessary.
• Ensures testing is conducted in a manner that does not impact the production environment (e.g., scheduling of file transmissions, etc.) and in accordance with established information security and information privacy policies and guidelines.
• Implements quality, operational, and service management processes and ensure adherence to the processes.
• Provides testing estimates and estimate revisions for costs and resources, track financial actuals against provided estimates and provide forecasts to appropriate stakeholders.
   

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Education:

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience: Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent field.
• Master's Degree Computer science, business administration, software engineering or equivalent field preferred.

Work Experience:

• 12+ Years Experience developing test strategies, test plans, and test cases.

Skills and Abilities:

• Experienced in managing large geographic teams in the creation and enforcement of QA process, procedure, and methodology.
• Creates and manages a large portfolio of multi-matrixed testing teams.
• Ability to prioritize and manage workload.
• Project management skills.
• Ability to build relationships and work collaboratively.
• Advanced knowledge of job area combining breadth and depth of experience.
• Excellent communication skills (written and verbal) with ability to listen and influence stakeholders at all levels
• Passion for optimizing the customer / end-user experience.
• Providing coaching, mentoring and guidance to staff
• Strong collaborating skills and experience in people management and skills development
• Strong commercial business acumen with knowledge of inter-dependencies that impact the organization
• Proven data analysis, data verification, and problem-solving abilities
• Attention to Detail

EEO Statement:  At Santander, we value and respect differences in our workforce. We actively encourage everyone to apply.

Santander is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Working Conditions: Frequent Minimal physical effort such as sitting, standing, and walking. Occasional moving and lifting equipment and furniture is required to support onsite and offsite meeting setup and teardown. Physically capable of lifting up to fifty pounds, able to bend, kneel, climb ladders.
Employer Rights: This job description does not list all of the job duties of the job. You may be asked by your supervisors or managers to perform other duties. You may be evaluated in part based upon your performance of the tasks listed in this job description. The employer has the right to revise this job description at any time. This job description is not a contract for employment and either you or the employer may terminate at any time for any reason.

$157,500.00 USD

$260,000.00 USD