Quality Engineering Manager at Bestow

ABOUT BESTOW Life insurance is one of the world's most important products. It's also one of the hardest to build, distribute, and modernize. Bestow exists to change that. Bestow is a leading vertical technology platform serving some of the largest and most innovative life insurers. Our platform unifies the fragmented, legacy value chain, enabling carriers to launch products in weeks instead of years. Carriers choose us to scale and operate at unprecedented speed, powered by AI and automation. Bestow isn't selling policies. We're building the infrastructure that helps an entire industry move faster, reach more people, and deliver on its promise. Backed by leading investors (Goldman Sachs, Hedosophia, NEA, Valar, 8VC) and trusted by major carriers, Bestow is powered by a team that moves with precision, purpose, and heart. If you want to help reimagine a centuries-old industry with lasting impact, join us. Bestow offers flexible remote/hybrid work, meaningful benefits, equity, and substantial growth opportunities. Bestow participates in the E-Verify Program [Upgrade to PRO to see link] ABOUT THE TEAM We are hiring a Manager of Quality Engineering to help lead and elevate our software quality and test automation disciplines into a new age of AI-enabled software quality practices. This is not a test automation management role. This is a senior technical leadership position for a hands-on software engineering leader who builds quality systems that scale. You will serve as the bridge between software engineering and quality engineering, and a key partner to teams across our SDLC, to help raise the bar for software craftsperson-ship, test strategy and test design, automation architecture, reporting intelligence, and overall engineering delivery. WHAT YOU’LL DO You will lead the transformation of our Quality Engineering practices into a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) discipline – engineers who write substantial, production-grade code and engineer quality systems that scale. This role is about building foundational capabilities, improving system-wide testability, elevating signal integrity, and enabling the entire organization to deliver with confidence. You will help shape the systems, processes, and analytics that transform mature quality practices and automation into sustained release confidence and a measurable competitive advantage. Engineering Strategy & Systems Design - Partner to define and execute upon a Quality Engineering transformation roadmap grounded in modern SDET principles. - Spearhead scalable test orchestration platforms capable of executing complex, interdependent validation workflows across distributed systems. - Empower the team to design, deliver, and maintain reusable test frameworks, harnesses, and shared quality infrastructure. - Influence application development and platform architecture to improve testability, observability, isolation, and fault diagnosis. - Drive the institutionalization of risk-based testing and coverage strategy aligned to business-critical workflows. - Design Quality Engineering practices that explicitly reduce developer cognitive load, formalize requirements clarity (Definition of Ready, Spec Driven Development), and strengthen testability at the source. - Lead programs that materially increase release confidence and organizational trust. Full-Spectrum Testing Leadership Establish engineering excellence across all layers of validation: - Unit, component, integration, API, system, and end-to-end testing. - Non-functional disciplines, including performance, reliability, security, accessibility, and usability. - Architect fast, deterministic feedback loops through parallelizable test design, intelligent test selection and test gap analysis, and impact-based test execution strategies. - CI/CD automation workflows and automated quality gates that optimize for signal quality, minimize cognitive overhead, and preserve developer flow. - Measurable reductions in Change Failure Rate, Defect Escape Rate, and production incidents. Test Reporting & Quality Intelligence Elevate reporting from static output to decision infrastructure: - Champion enterprise-grade test reporting and analytics systems using platforms such as Allure, ReportPortal, or equivalent. - Transform large-scale test execution data into decision-grade quality intelligence. - Implement flakiness detection, failure clustering, historical trend modeling, and AI-assisted triage. - Improve CI/CD signal-to-noise ratio and eliminate false confidence. - Establish trusted release dashboards used by Engineering and Product leadership. - Align quality metrics with measurable business outcomes (CFR, MTTR, defect escape rate, release stability). AI-Enabled Quality Engineering - Integrate AI-assisted tooling into requirements and specifications, test generation, maintenance, failure analysis, and reporting workflows. - Use analytics and predictive insights to continuously refine coverage strategy. - Establish guardrails for responsible and secure AI adoption within quality engineering practices. - Explore intelligent failure clustering and anomaly detection to reduce manual triage effort. Organizational Leadership & Enablement - Recruit, coach, and retain high-performing hybrid developer–test engineers. - Develop career pathways that attract strong application engineers into quality engineering roles. - Lead and grow a team of SDETs while continuously raising technical standards, engineering rigor, and craftsperson-ship expectations. - Manage initiatives from inception through long-term sustainment. - Institutionalize third-party tools where appropriate while maintaining engineering ownership of quality systems. - Partner across Engineering, Product, Platform, Security, and Customer-facing teams to embed quality upstream and enable engineering excellence. - Break complex problems into fundamental truths and act decisively. - Promote intellectual rigor, ownership, inclusivity, and long-term systems thinking. - Align Quality Engineering practices with core Developer Experience (DevEx) tenets – reducing cognitive load, improving feedback loops, and enabling sustained focus and engineering flow. WHO YOU ARE - 8+ years of demonstrated experience with progressively increasing responsibility, from hands-on engineering execution to organizational leadership in software quality and test automation. - Experience leading engineering teams of 5 to 12+ engineers. - Proven experience building test frameworks, test orchestration systems, and software quality-focused tooling. - Deep hands-on experience with TypeScript/JavaScript ecosystems (React, Jest, Playwright, Cypress, etc.). - Polyglot engineering background (Node.js/JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, etc.). - Expertise in enterprise test results reporting and quality analytics platforms. - Demonstrated history of progressively increasing responsibility – from hands-on engineering execution to system-level architecture and organizational leadership. - Proven ability to expand scope from individual contributor impact to team-level and cross-functional enablement. - Demonstrated ability to break complex problems into first principles and execute decisively. - Strong ownership mindset and long-term systems thinking. TOTAL REWARDS At Bestow, we’re proud to be awarded for our team members, innovative products, and culture. Our standard benefits include: - Competitive salary and equity based on role - Policies and managers that support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave programs - 100% paid-premium option for medical, dental, and vision insurance - Lifestyle stipend to support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing - Flexible work-from-home policy and open to remote - Remote and WFH options, as well as a beautiful, state-of-the-art office in Dallas’ Deep Ellum, for those who prefer an office setting - Employee-led diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives Recent Employer Awards include: - Best Place for Working Parents 2023 + 2024 + 2025 - Great Place to Work Certified, 2022 + 2023 + 2024 + 2025 - Built In Best Places to Work, 2022 + 2023 + 2025 - Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Texas 2022 + 2023 - Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance 2022 + 2023 + 2024 We value diversity at Bestow. The company will hire, recruit, and promote regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, pregnancy or maternity, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. We understand the importance of creating a safe and comfortable work environment and encourage individualism and authenticity in every team member. Thanks for considering a job at Bestow!