Overview
Head of Quality Assurance Jobs in Dubai, United Arab Emirates at RAKBANK
Title: Head of Quality Assurance
Company: RAKBANK
Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Job Purpose:
The Head of QA is RAKBANK's enterprise quality authority — a strategic leadership role accountable for transforming the bank's approach to software quality from a phase-end testing gate into a continuous, embedded quality engineering discipline woven into every stage of the SDLC. RAKBANK's current testing landscape is predominantly manual, with limited automation coverage and a reactive quality culture. This role is explicitly mandated to change that reality: to build a world-class QA practice characterised by automation-first delivery, AI-driven testing, shift-left quality principles, intelligent test data management, and quality gates embedded within CI/CD pipelines. The Head of QA owns the entire quality engineering strategy, toolchain, governance, and team — partnering with DevEx, Platform Engineering, and delivery squads to ensure every software release meets the quality bar required by a CBUAE-regulated bank serving retail, SME, and wholesale customers.
What You Will Do:
- Define and own the enterprise quality engineering strategy, roadmap, KPIs, and automation coverage targets.
- Establish and lead a Quality Engineering Centre of Excellence, publishing standards, golden paths, and tooling guidelines.
- Govern quality gates across the full SDLC, enforcing entry and exit criteria across all testing stages.
- Drive shift‑left quality adoption, embedding QA into squads and promoting BDD/TDD and shared accountability.
- Own the test automation programme, including framework governance and automation ROI tracking.
- Lead adoption of AI‑assisted testing, including LLM‑based test generation, self‑healing automation, and intelligent prioritisation.
- Establish intelligent test data management, including synthetic data, masking, and self‑service provisioning.
- Own non‑functional quality engineering, covering performance, resilience, chaos engineering, and API contract testing.
- Define and govern test environment strategy, enabling automated and on‑demand environment provisioning.
- Represent quality at programme and release governance forums, owning UAT coordination, go/no‑go decisions, and executive quality reporting.
What you will bring:
- 12+ years in software quality engineering, including senior QA leadership experience in a bank or regulated financial institution.
- Proven leadership of a manual‑to‑automation, shift‑left QA transformation integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
- Deep expertise in test automation frameworks and test management platforms.
- Strong hands‑on experience with performance and resilience testing for critical financial systems.
- Demonstrated experience evaluating and governing AI‑assisted testing tools.
- Expert knowledge of test data governance, including synthetic data and PII masking.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field; ISTQB Advanced Test Manager required.
What We Are Not Looking For:
❌ A traditional, phase‑end testing manager who treats QA as a final gate rather than an embedded engineering discipline across the SDLC.
❌ A leader comfortable with manual‑heavy testing models, without a strong track record of driving automation‑first, CI/CD‑integrated quality transformations.
❌ A candidate without appetite or credibility in AI‑assisted testing, self‑healing automation, or intelligent test prioritisation as part of modern QA practice.
❌ A purely operational QA head who executes tests but does not define strategy, influence engineering culture, or establish enterprise quality standards.
❌ A profile unfamiliar with regulated banking environments, unable to balance delivery speed with CBUAE‑grade quality, resiliency, and governance expectations.
