Quality Lead - Hawthorn East

We’ve been proudly serving Australian communities since 1914 and have grown to become a top 30-listed company on the ASX with a portfolio of iconic homegrown brands. At the heart of our continued success is over 115,000 team members working across the country, all contributing to bringing our customers smiles. You’ll not only get to see your work make a difference, you’ll be part of a team working together to help Australians eat and live better every day.

About the team

Our Technology team is the backbone of the business, building and maintaining the information technology infrastructure that support Coles Group. As a part of the Technology team, you get the opportunity to work through complex, challenging, meaningful problems using large data sets and new technologies to expand your skills and experience.

About the Role

We’re seeking an experienced Quality Lead to join our Technology team. In this role, you’ll lead and coordinate quality assurance and testing activities across technology projects and releases within our retail businesses — including supermarkets, liquor, and group platforms. Reporting to the Group Quality Manager, you’ll provide hands-on leadership in planning, execution, and reporting of testing activities across multiple delivery teams.

You’ll ensure testing is embedded throughout the delivery lifecycle, with a strong focus on risk mitigation, automation, and continuous improvement. Collaborating closely with engineers, delivery managers, and product teams, you’ll define test strategies, manage environments and data, and verify that systems meet both functional and non-functional requirements. You’ll also mentor testers and quality engineers, fostering best practices in test design, automation, and defect management.

Key responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day testing activities for product releases
• Manage, mentor, and provide direction to QA analysts/engineers
• Oversee test execution (functional, regression, UAT, performance) and ensure robust test cases
• Review and approve test cases and scripts
• Act as an escalation point for testing issues and lead defect review meetings
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to align on release cycles
• Drive implementation of test automation and management tools
• Define metrics to track test coverage, defects, and release quality
• Ensure consistent documentation and QA process governance
• Contribute to continuous improvement in testing processes and techniques
  
  

About you and your skills

• 5+ years of experience as a Quality Lead across multiple projects and team sizes
• Retail or Supply Chain experience (highly desirable)
• Strong understanding of testing methodologies, processes, and automation frameworks
• Proven experience with Microfocus ALM (QC), Confluence, and JIRA
• Experience leading testing teams or QA processes and working with vendors
• Comfortable with performance and API testing
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills
• Ability to influence outcomes and drive improvement initiatives
• Bachelor’s degree in computer systems or related field

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What’s in it for you?

• Flexible working options: We know that work is only one part of your life, so we actively encourage a positive work-life balance and provide hybrid working options to help you achieve it.
• Office perks: Take advantage of our gym facility and fitness classes, free parking, BBQ area, mini-Coles supermarket, fooderie hub where you can sample new products before they hit the shelves, school holiday program and so much more when you come in.
• Discounts: Eligible team members receive 5% discount all year round on your Supermarket and Liquor online and in-store purchases. We also offer additional periods of double discount (10%) at various times throughout the year. As well as hotdeals exclusive to team members that translate into additional savings.
• Reward through recognition: Give and receive recognition, linked to our Coles values, through our digital recognition platform ‘mythanks’. You can accumulate points to redeem in the online shop for exciting gifts and electronic gift cards from an extensive range of retailers.
• Opportunities for learning and development: No matter where you start within our diverse business, you’ll have experiences, exposure, and education to satisfy you. Discover and explore a variety of career development programs and job-specific training.
• Paid parental leave: We understand how important your life outside work is and offer permanent team members paid parental leave to support you in balancing work and family.
• Investment in your future: Our annual team member share plan offer allows eligible team members to make regular pre-tax salary sacrifice deductions to purchase Coles Group shares.

About the recruitment process

We’re continuing to build a gender equitable team, and a culture that is just as diverse, inclusive and welcoming as the communities we serve. We are committed to creating a workplace that is safe and respectful for our team. We encourage applications from people of all ages, cultures (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples), abilities, sexual orientation and gender identities.

We’re happy to adjust our recruitment process to support candidates with disability. For further information and additional contact details visit the ‘Our Recruitment Process’ section of our careers site or email inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au

Job ID: 174644

Employment Type: Full time