Test Practice Manager
Also called: test practice lead, QA practice lead, head of QA
A Test Practice Manager is responsible for how testing is done across teams: strategy, standards, hiring, mentoring and the evidence leadership sees.
A tester owns the quality evidence for their own slice of a product. A Test Practice Manager owns the way every slice produces that evidence: the strategy, the guidelines, the dashboards, the hiring and the mentoring.
The risk in the role is turning into a process enforcer who attends meetings about quality and no longer tests anything. The value is in making quality visible without slowing delivery, and in growing people who can make the calls themselves.
I grew into the role over four years on a global facilities programme. I rebuilt the test strategy, wrote test-case guidelines, built dashboards in JIRA and Azure DevOps, interviewed and mentored QA engineers, and kept time for hands-on testing throughout.