• Lead and mentor a team of SDETs and automation engineers, setting clear standards for technical excellence and delivery • Drive the strategy and implementation of AI-powered and agentic automation solutions to improve defect detection, test generation, test maintenance, and deployment validation • Evaluate and integrate emerging AI tooling into the quality engineering ecosystem, ensuring scalable, secure, and measurable impact on release confidence and automation efficiency • Lead and monitor reduction of change failure rates through improved test architecture, release validation, and deployment safeguards • Expand and optimize automated test coverage across UI, API, integration, and backend systems • Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to proactively identify risk and improve release stability • Champion continuous improvement through root cause analysis, defect trend evaluation, and performance monitoring • Remain hands-on when necessary, reviewing automation design, validating technical approaches, and guiding architectural decisions • Drive continuous improvement by identifying gaps in processes, tooling, and test coverage