Hicks

Product Owner - QA
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
ChicagoIllinois Contract Sep 8, 2026
Product Owner - QA
 Chicago, IL | Hybrid | 12 Months
Job Details
  • Estimated Start Date: 28 September 2026
  • Building Location: Chicago Office
  • Remote Possibility: Hybrid
  • Additional Remote Comments: 2 days for now but can increase later
  • Daily Schedule: Monday thru Friday; 1st shift
  • Estimated Duration: 12 months
Job Description
We are seeking a Product Owner for the Test Team who will drive the vision, roadmap, and delivery of testing capabilities, quality tooling, and QA process improvements across the engineering organization. This role partners closely with QA engineers, developers, DevOps engineers, and business stakeholders to ensure testing platforms, automation frameworks, and quality workflows support fast, reliable software delivery.
Position's Contributions to Work Group
  • The ideal candidate has experience working with software testing teams, understands Agile product ownership, and has basic DevOps knowledge including CI/CD pipelines, release processes, and environment management.
  • Improved automation adoption and test efficiency
  • Better visibility into quality metrics and release readiness
  • Reduced test environment and pipeline-related blockers
  • Clear prioritization and faster delivery of QA platform improvements
Typical Day or Week in the Role
Typical Task Breakdown
  • Own and manage the product backlog for the test team’s tools, frameworks, and quality initiatives.
  • Define and prioritize features for test automation, test data management, environment stability, and reporting.
  • Gather requirements from engineering, QA, release, and business stakeholders.
  • Translate business and technical needs into clear user stories and acceptance criteria.
  • Work closely with QA, development, and DevOps teams to improve quality practices across the SDLC.
  • Support continuous improvement of testing processes, automation coverage, and release confidence.
  • Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement, reviews, and retrospectives.
  • Track key quality metrics such as defect leakage, test coverage, automation success rate, and release readiness.
  • Help coordinate test environments and understand dependencies within CI/CD workflows.
  • Contribute to prioritization of issues related to build pipelines, test execution reliability, and deployment readiness.
  • Act as the main point of contact for testing-related product decisions and roadmap alignment.
Interaction with Team
  • Testing Team consists of 45-50 people.
  • Working with cross teams
Education & Experience Required
  • 2-4 years’ experience in this capacity
  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
Required Technical Skills
  • Experience as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, QA Lead, or similar role in a software delivery environment.
  • Good understanding of software testing concepts including functional, regression, integration, and automated testing.
  • Experience working in Agile/Scrum teams.
  • Ability to write user stories, define acceptance criteria, and manage a prioritized backlog.
  • Familiarity with test management and defect tracking tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, TestRail, or similar.
Key Technical Skills
  • Product backlog management
  • Agile/Scrum product ownership
  • QA and test process knowledge
  • Basic DevOps / CI/CD understanding
  • Stakeholder communication
  • Prioritization and decision-making
  • Risk and dependency management
Preferred Qualifications
  • Basic experience with DevOps practices and tools.
  • Understanding of CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Azure DevOps.
  • Familiarity with source control systems like Git.
  • Awareness of environment management, deployment flows, and release coordination.
  • Exposure to test automation tools such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Postman, or API automation frameworks.
  • Experience working with quality dashboards, reporting, and release metrics.
Nice to Have
  • Experience in regulated, enterprise, or fast-paced delivery environments
  • Knowledge of release management and quality gates.
Soft Skills
Required
  • Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
  • Analytical and problem-solving skills