Quality Assurance (QA) Manager

Department: Digital Governance

Location: Agence Togo Digital, Lomé, Togo

Reporting Manager: Head of Architecture and Compliance

Functional Collaborations: Digital Factory team, PMO and Change Management team, Project Managers, Architects, Security, Infrastructure and Operations teams, technical vendors, beneficiary administrations

Positions available: 1

Main Mission

Within the framework of the Togolese Administration's accelerated digitalization program and the provision of reliable, secure, and high-performance IT solutions to public entities, the QA Manager will be responsible for leading, structuring, and supervising the Quality Assurance function within Agence Togo Digital.

He/she will contribute to defining testing frameworks, user acceptance testing (UAT) models, and software quality assurance procedures. He/she will establish the quality repositories, methodologies, tooling matrices, and KPIs applicable across all digital projects executed by the Agency. He/she will guarantee that solutions developed, integrated, or deployed by ATD successfully satisfy the functional, technical, performance, security, accessibility, reliability, and compliance criteria expected in a highly demanding institutional ecosystem.

In the execution of their duties, the QA Manager is expected to produce, update, or validate the following key deliverables, depending on the specific typology of the projects under their purview:

• Agency-wide QA Strategy and Governance Manual: defining the core quality vision, guiding principles, targets, and operational quality roadmap;

• Quality and Methodology Repository: standards, testing matrix policies, acceptance criteria, test plan templates, UAT processes, and production go-live checklists;

• Test Suites and Matrices: detailed functional, technical, non-regression, performance, application security, and user acceptance test plans;

• Test Campaign and Acceptance Reports: comprehensive logs detailing identified anomalies, their severity/criticality vectors, resolution statuses, and architectural recommendations;

• Consolidated Quality Dashboards formatted for Executive Leadership and project Steering Committees;

• Quality Tooling Master Plan: standardizing test execution management, defect tracking, automation frameworks, CI/CD pipeline integration, and automated reporting engines;

• QA Team Upskilling Plan along with performance evaluation matrices;

• Project Quality Closure Reports: including post-mortems, variant gaps, residual risks, technical QA debt, and deployment recommendations;

• Annual Quality Assurance Activity and Performance Review.

The QA Manager will work in close alignment with the Agency’s various departments and teams. He/she may also be requested to support the underlying design, engineering reviews, user acceptance testing, formal certification/homologation, and continuous optimization of digital platforms built for public administrations.

Responsibilities

1. Quality Strategy Definition and Governance

• Author, formalize, and continuously optimize ATD’s overarching QA strategy, compliance criteria, and testing protocols.

• Establish standard operating testing processes and documentation standards applicable across all digital projects.

• Define and enforce the strict quality gates and criteria required before authorizing any production go-live.

• Champion a "shift-left" quality culture, embedding QA checkpoints early into the scoping, design, and development cycles.

• Align QA operational frameworks with the Agency's overarching application security, regulatory compliance, performance, and business continuity mandates.

• Evangelize a unified quality culture across cross-functional project, technical, and business teams.

2. Test Campaign Management and User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

• Plan, prioritize, and coordinate end-to-end testing activities across the Agency’s multi-project portfolio.

• Supervise the design of project-specific test strategies, comprehensive test plans, detailed test cases, and realistic mock dataset environments.

• Monitor the thorough execution of functional, technical, integration, regression, performance/load, and application security tests.

• Coordinate multi-actor user acceptance testing (UAT) campaigns alongside internal developers, external technical vendors, and beneficiary public administrations.

• Ensure absolute, airtight traceability across business requirements, written test cases, logged bugs, and validation approvals.

• Formulate data-driven, documented QA risk assessments and formal recommendations prior to deployment, UAT sign-off, or production release windows.

3. QA Team Building, Mentorship, and Leadership

• Form, build, and structure a dedicated internal QA core team capable of overseeing test campaigns for both internally engineered products and externally outsourced vendor software.

• Manage, mentor, and structurally lead the Agency's quality assurance and test engineers.

• Delegate, schedule, and balance tasks within the QA cell based on project criticalities and executive timelines.

• Drive the continuous technical upskilling of test engineers regarding advanced testing frameworks, automation toolsets, and industry best practices.

• Institutionalize routine progress reviews, internal code/test audits, and knowledge-sharing standups within the QA team.

• Conduct objective performance evaluations and formulate target-driven team optimization metrics.

• Cultivate standard operating habits and document lessons learned from post-campaign reviews to foster organizational maturity.

4. Test Automation and CI/CD Quality Gate Integration

• Participate in defining an industrial test automation blueprint adapted to the Agency's multi-tier applications and timelines.

• Map and identify high-value test cases eligible for automation, prioritizing core regression frameworks.

• Supervise the seamless orchestration of automated test scripts into active CI/CD deployment pipelines.

• Evaluate, rationalize, and industrialize standard automation frameworks and software choices across the organization.

• Track automation efficiency via targeted telemetry: code coverage metrics, script stability, runtime execution duration, false positive rates, and maintainability overhead.

• Partner with Development, DevOps, Security, and Systems Operations teams to construct continuous, automated quality loops.

5. Defect Management, Quality Metrics, and Enterprise Reporting

• Establish and govern the full lifecycle defect management workflow from initial identification through verification and closure.

• Oversee the strict triage, classification, prioritization, and tracking of mission-critical and blocker anomalies.

• Synthesize core QA performance indicators (KPIs) to drive data-centric decisions across project life cycles.

• Deliver high-visibility, consolidated quality health dashboards tailored for the Technical Direction, the PMO, and project steering committees.

• Audit and interpret quality trends: defect density ratios, bug reopening rates, environment test coverage margins, production leakage rates, and SLA/acceptance criteria fulfillment.

• Draft highly actionable operational optimizations to de-risk active projects and increase deliverable robustness.

6. Stakeholder Alignment and Institutional Coordination

• Act as the lead Quality Assurance liaison bridging the communication loop between ATD engineering squads, external IT vendors, and target public administrations.

• Participate in technical reviews and steering committees, acting as the authoritative voice on software quality, validation states, and launch readiness.

• Help project managers, system architects, and business analysts structure testable, unambiguous acceptance criteria during product discovery.

• Ensure the end-to-end testing scope addresses the practical workflows and day-to-day operational constraints of civil servants and citizens.

• Provide functional support during final business validation, user training sign-offs, and critical system go-lives.

• Assist in negotiating objective quality trade-offs when navigating compressed delivery schedules, scope adjustments, or critical engineering deadlines.

7. Security, Compliance, and Continuous Optimization

• Mandate the incorporation of application security baselines, data privacy rules, performance limits, and high-availability criteria into all testing designs.

• Partner with information security teams to align QA cycles with scheduled vulnerability scans, robustness mapping, and DevSecOps audits.

• Document and map quality vulnerabilities or operational risks capable of impairing live application suites.

• Design robust risk-mitigation roadmaps and track their tactical execution.

• Capitalize on post-launch incidents and real-world production bugs to optimize existing test coverage grids.

• Drive continuous cross-departmental improvements touching software development methodologies, deployment processes, and production runbooks.

Required Skills

• Testing Methodologies: Master-level command of standard software testing principles, standards, and frameworks (e.g., ISTQB, Agile Testing patterns, TMMi models).

• QA Lifecycle Architecture: Extensive track record architecting functional, regression, system integration, technical smoke tests, performance/stress testing, AppSec validation, and user acceptance (UAT) strategies.

• Test & Defect Management Tooling: Complete fluency in industry software orchestration platforms (e.g., TestRail, Xray, Zephyr, Jira, Zentao).

• Test Automation Frameworks: Strong practical knowledge of core automation frameworks (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Postman/Newman, Robot Framework).

• CI/CD Quality Engineering: Good understanding of embedding automated test scripts into automated delivery environments (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).

• Technical Breadth: Solid grasp of testing RESTful/GraphQL APIs, microservices behaviors, modern distributed web topologies, mobile applications, and cloud infrastructures.

• Application Security (AppSec): Awareness of cybersecurity baselines (OWASP Top 10), automated vulnerability scans, identity/access management tracking, and data protection rules.

• Performance Telemetry: Practical command of load and stress generation engines (e.g., JMeter, k6, Gatling).

• Metrics Engineering: Expert capacity to model, track, and optimize QA telemetry (e.g., test coverage, defect density, bug fix rates, reopen percentages, production escape rates, quality debt indices).

• Leadership & Strategy: Proven capacity to manage, structure, and scale a QA function in a multi-vendor, multi-tenant environment. High ability to mentor, negotiate technical compromises, and express quality constraints clearly to both developers and public sector executives.

• Languages: Superior written and verbal eloquence in French; good working command of technical English.

Qualifications

• Education: Master’s degree (BAC+5) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems Management, Software Quality Engineering, or a related technical domain.

• Professional Experience: A minimum of 5 years of experience in software quality assurance, software engineering, or application testing.

• Leadership Track Record: At least 2 years explicitly in a senior or managerial capacity (e.g., QA Lead, QA Team Lead, Test Manager, QA Manager, UAT Director, or equivalent).

• Organizational Maturity: Proven experience building, scaling, or structurally transforming a QA function within a corporate or public enterprise.

• Sector Context: Significant experience navigating complex, mission-critical software systems with high user visibility. Prior backgrounds in public administration, institutional transformation, fintech/banking, telecommunications, or healthcare IT environments will be highly prioritized.

• Professional Certifications: Core testing credentials are highly valued (e.g., ISTQB Advanced Level, Test Manager, Agile Tester, TMMi Professional, or equivalent). Secondary certifications in agile frameworks, enterprise project management, or ITSM are a strong plus (e.g., PMP, PRINCE2, Scrum Master, DevOps, ITIL, OWASP).

Job Requirements and Challenges

• Operating as a cross-functional quality gatekeeper supporting and auditing the entire digital portfolio of the Agency.

• Seamless matrix coordination across a diverse range of technical engineers, corporate executives, external IT contractors, and senior civil servants.

• Simultaneous management of multiple parallel testing campaigns, varying project typologies, and rapid UAT cycles.

• High visibility role requiring frequent interactions with steering committees, institutional partners, and agency directors.

• Uncompromising commitment to maintaining strict quality benchmarks despite project timeline adjustments, scope creep, or fast-moving national priorities.

• Ability to handle difficult choices, raise formal risk alerts, and defend data-backed technical positions before giving deployment sign-offs.

• Increased operational availability required during high-stakes go-live phases, data migration windows, or major production incident resolution cells.

• Extreme commitment to confidentiality, administrative traceability, and exhaustive record-keeping of all institutional quality decisions.

• Ability to dynamically tailor technical QA findings into clear, risk-oriented business language for non-technical government leaders.