Description
Job Title: Principal Quality Engineering Lead
Duration: Contract
Location: Blue Ash, OH
Required Pay Scale: 50-60/hr on W2
- Due to client requirements this role is only open to USC or GC candidates*
Job Summary: We are seeking a Principal Quality Engineering Lead to drive transformational quality engineering initiatives across Product, Engineering, Architecture, SRE, Release Management, and Quality Engineering teams. This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct people management responsibility, requiring strong technical depth, systems thinking, and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
The ideal candidate will be able to take ambiguous engineering and quality challenges, identify systemic root causes, develop strategic roadmaps, and drive sustainable solutions with measurable business outcomes.
Project Details:
- Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams and organizational boundaries.
- Define and implement quality engineering strategies, standards, architectures, and test approaches.
- Drive improvements across test automation, CI/CD, release quality, test environments, observability, risk management, and production readiness.
- Partner with Engineering, Product, Architecture, SRE, Release Management, and Quality Engineering leadership.
- Identify and implement opportunities to leverage AI across the software development lifecycle.
- Evaluate emerging AI capabilities to improve engineering productivity, test effectiveness, and delivery speed.
- Investigate complex technical, process, and organizational challenges and drive root-cause analysis.
- Mentor senior engineers and technical leads while leading through influence rather than authority.
- Review technical designs, automation frameworks, implementation approaches, and architectural trade-offs.
- Drive sustainable solutions and measurable engineering outcomes rather than temporary fixes.
Must Haves
- 10+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Quality Engineering, Platform Engineering, or related technical disciplines.
- Experience leading large-scale technical initiatives without direct authority.
- Strong Quality Engineering expertise with experience defining test strategies across multiple test levels.
- Deep understanding of test automation frameworks and CI/CD practices.
- Strong understanding of modern software delivery practices and distributed systems.
- Experience with release quality, risk assessment, defect prevention, and production readiness.
- Ability to effectively review code, automation frameworks, technical designs, and architectural approaches.
- Demonstrated experience applying AI tools to engineering workflows, beyond simple code generation.
- Strong root-cause analysis, problem-solving, and systems-thinking capabilities.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Ability to operate at a Principal/enterprise level and guide engineering teams without being the primary implementer.
Desired Skills
- Experience driving enterprise-wide Quality Engineering transformation.
- Experience with observability, environment strategy, release governance, and software delivery governance.
- Experience implementing AI-assisted engineering and testing workflows.
- Understanding of AI strengths, limitations, risks, and responsible AI adoption.
- Strong architecture and distributed-systems knowledge.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and technical leads.
- Ability to translate broad business objectives into actionable technical roadmaps.
- Experience collaborating across Engineering, Product, Architecture, SRE, Release Management, and Quality Engineering.
- Proven track record of delivering measurable business and engineering outcomes.
About Matlen Silver
Experience Matters. Let your experience be driven by our experience. For more than 40 years, Matlen Silver has delivered solutions for complex talent and technology needs to Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders. Led by hard work, honesty, and a trusted team of experts, we can say that Matlen Silver technology has created a solutions experience and legacy of success that is the difference in the way the world works.
Matlen Silver is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers all applicants for all positions without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, veteran status, the presence of a non-job-related medical condition or disability, or any other legally protected status.
If you are a person with a disability needing assistance with the application or at any point in the hiring process, please contact us at email and/or phone at: [email protected] // 908-393-8600
At The Matlen Silver Group, Inc., W2 employees are eligible for the following benefits:
- Health, vision, and dental insurance (single and family coverage)
- 401(k) plan (employee contributions only)