Salesforce QA Lead

Title: Salesforce QA Lead

Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Note: Candidate must be able to work on Client's W2 - No sponsorship available (Independent candidate required only)

Position Overview

As the first in-house Salesforce QA Lead, you will be instrumental in transitioning Salesforce expertise from external partners to a dedicated internal team. This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for defining the quality strategy, establishing testing standards, and ensuring high-performance delivery across the Salesforce ecosystem. You will not just validate outcomes but embed quality throughout the entire development lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Quality Strategy & Leadership: Define and own the end-to-end QA strategy for Sales, Service, and Marketing Clouds. Establish quality gates and acceptance criteria in partnership with architects and delivery leads.

• Test Planning & Execution: Lead functional, integration, regression, and UAT for web and mobile platforms. Ensure rigorous coverage for Salesforce Mobile field-usage scenarios.

• Architectural Partnership: Collaborate with Technical Architects and Developers early in the design phase to clarify testability, data setup, and automation opportunities.

• Vendor Oversight: Provide QA oversight for work delivered by third-party implementation partners. Validate their test approaches and drive corrective actions for quality gaps.

• Integration & Release Readiness: Validate data integrity across complex integration paths and provide "Go/No-Go" recommendations for deployments based on quality findings.

• Compliance: Ensure testing practices meet audit, security, and regulatory requirements typical of the CPG industry.

Critical Outcomes

• First 60 Days: Deliver a comprehensive Salesforce QA strategy and test approach covering web/mobile. Provide a gap analysis of current in-flight work, identifying risks in environments, data, or coverage.

• First 90 Days: Fully embed QA into the design-through-release lifecycle, reducing defect leakage and establishing consistent standards across internal and partner-led work.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Lead-Level Expertise: Proven experience leading QA strategy and execution specifically within the Salesforce ecosystem.

• Multi-Cloud Experience: Hands-on manual testing proficiency in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud.

• Mobile Testing: Experience validating Salesforce Mobile solutions for distributed or field users.

• Vendor Management: Prior experience in "Vendor-Led Delivery Models," providing oversight for external implementation partners.

• Industry Background: Experience working in a regulated industry (e.g., CPG, Tobacco, Finance) is highly preferred.

• Technical Familiarity: Understanding of test automation approaches and how to integrate them into a manual testing foundation.