Test Lead SME / Associate Director

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HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with operations in 64 countries and territories. We aim to be where the growth is, enabling businesses to thrive and economies to prosper, and, ultimately, helping people to fulfil their hopes and realise their ambitions.

We are currently seeking an experienced professional to join our team in the role of Associate Director, Test Lead SME

In this role, you will: (Principal Responsibilities)

- Act as the senior technical lead for integration testing across the Product Control pod and Channels IT programme.

- Define and own the end-to-end integration-testing strategy across upstream, downstream, internal and third-party systems.

- Establish integration-test scope, environments, test data, dependencies, entry and exit criteria, quality gates and release-readiness measures.

- Lead testing across APIs, microservices, messaging platforms, event-driven services, data pipelines, databases and reporting interfaces.

- Ensure end-to-end business flows are validated across contact center, Product Control, accounting, regulatory and reconciliation processes.

- Coordinate integration testing with global teams across the UK, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, India and Canada.

- Identify and manage interface, environment, data, sequencing and dependency risks.

- Ensure defects are logged, prioritized, root causes are understood and remediation is tracked through to closure.

- Provide clear status reporting on integration coverage, risks, defects, dependencies and release readiness.

NFR strategy and assurance

- Define and maintain the NFR strategy, ensuring requirements are identified, measurable, testable and traceable to business and technical outcomes.

- Work with architects, engineers, infrastructure, security, operations and business stakeholders to establish NFR acceptance criteria.

- Lead the planning and execution of NFR testing, including:

- Performance, load, stress and endurance testing

- Scalability and capacity testing

- Resilience, failover and recovery testing

- Availability and service-continuity validation

- Data quality, integrity and reconciliation testing

- Security, access-control and vulnerability validation

- Monitoring, alerting, logging and observability testing

- Disaster-recovery and operational-readiness testing

- Deployment, rollback and production-verification testing

- Define performance baselines, service-level thresholds, capacity assumptions and production-volume scenarios.

- Assess NFR risks and ensure that identified gaps have documented remediation plans and accountable owners.

- Challenge designs and implementation approaches where they may create unacceptable performance, resilience, security or operational risks.

- Produce NFR evidence and sign-off recommendations for governance forums, architecture reviews and release decisions.

- Support audit, regulatory and control requirements through complete and traceable test documentation.

Technical quality engineering

- Provide hands-on technical leadership for test automation and integration-validation solutions using Java and relevant testing frameworks.

- Develop and maintain automation for APIs, services, data flows, messaging, database validation and end-to-end scenarios.

- Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and establish appropriate shift-left quality practices.

- Partner with software engineers to improve service testability, observability, error handling and operational supportability.

- Review test designs, automation code, test results and technical evidence for quality and completeness.

- Support deployment and release activities, including pre-production validation and post-deployment verification.

- Contribute to technical delivery plans, estimates, timelines and sprint planning.

Architecture and stakeholder management

- Work with architecture teams to ensure that integration and NFR considerations are embedded in solution designs and aligned with the target-state architecture.

- Translate business and technical requirements into clear integration scenarios and measurable NFR acceptance criteria.

- Collaborate with upstream and downstream system teams to coordinate interfaces, environments, test data and delivery schedules.

- Communicate technical risks, quality trends and recommendations clearly to senior stakeholders.

- Manage expectations and negotiate practical compromises while protecting critical quality, control and risk outcomes.

- Support programme governance, release forums, technical design reviews and production-readiness assessments.

Leadership and people development

- Lead, coach and mentor integration-test and quality-engineering colleagues.

- Establish consistent testing standards, reusable approaches and a culture of quality ownership.

- Provide functional management and support the development, performance and career progression of direct reports.

- Contribute to recruitment, resource planning and capability development for the testing function.

- Promote inclusive, collaborative ways of working across geographically distributed teams.

What you’ll need to succeed

- Typically 10+ years’ experience in software testing, quality engineering, integration testing or software engineering, including significant experience in senior technical leadership roles.

- Proven experience leading integration testing for complex, enterprise-scale and regulated technology environments.

- Strong experience testing distributed systems, microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, messaging platforms and data-intensive applications.

- Demonstrable experience defining and delivering NFR strategies covering performance, scalability, resilience, availability, security, recoverability and operational readiness.

- Hands-on experience with Java and testing frameworks such as JUnit, TestNG, Mockito, Cucumber or equivalent.

- Experience with API and service-testing tools such as REST-assured, Postman, SoapUI or equivalent.

- Experience testing data integrations using relational and NoSQL databases, including data reconciliation, integrity and quality validation.

- Experience with performance and resilience-testing tools such as JMeter, Gatling, LoadRunner, Chaos Engineering tools or equivalent.

- Strong understanding of integration patterns, asynchronous processing, messaging, event streaming and distributed data flows.

- Experience with CI/CD and DevOps tools such as Jenkins, GitHub, SonarQube and Nexus.

- Experience working on Unix/Linux platforms.

- Experience with cloud technologies, containerised platforms and observability tools would be advantageous.

- Experience with data-streaming technologies, such as Apache Beam, would be a plus.

- Strong understanding of Agile delivery, Scrum, shift-left testing, risk-based testing and continuous testing.

- Experience defining quality gates, release criteria, NFR baselines and production-readiness assessments.

- Proven ability to influence senior business and technology stakeholders across multiple locations.

- Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.

- Self-motivated and accountable, with the ability to work independently, manage competing priorities and deliver under pressure.

- A disciplined approach to requirements analysis, test design, risk assessment, defect management and evidence production.

- Degree-level education in software engineering, computer science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

You’ll achieve more at HSBC

HSBC is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a culture where all employees are valued, respected and their opinions count. We take pride in providing a workplace that supports continuous professional development, flexible working and opportunities to grow within an inclusive and diverse environment.

We encourage applications from all suitably qualified candidates, irrespective of gender or genetic information, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, social status, medical or family-care requirements, political affiliation, disability, colour, national origin, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. All applications are considered on merit and suitability for the role.

Personal data held by the Bank relating to employment applications will be used in accordance with our Privacy Statement, which is available on our website.

You’ll achieve more when you join HSBC.
www.hsbc.com/careers

HSBC is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a culture where all employees are valued, respected and opinions count. We take pride in providing a workplace that fosters continuous professional development, flexible working and, opportunities to grow within an inclusive and diverse environment. We encourage applications from all suitably qualified persons irrespective of, but not limited to, their gender or genetic information, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, social status, medical care leave requirements, political affiliation, people with disabilities, color, national origin, veteran status, etc., We consider all applications based on merit and suitability to the role.”
Personal data held by the Bank relating to employment applications will be used in accordance with our Privacy Statement, which is available on our website.
Issued by – HSBC Software Development India