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.

Are you a strategic technology leader with deep Quality Engineering expertise and a passion for enabling speed, resilience, and innovation? Coles is seeking a Group Manager – Quality Engineering to shape and elevate our QE capability into a future‑ready, enterprise-wide enabler. In this role, you will operate a federated enablement model owning the QE platforms, standards, and governance mechanisms that uplift delivery across all portfolios, while influencing quality outcomes for critical business and SOCI‑classified systems.

About the role

In this pivotal leadership role, you will own and evolve Coles’ Quality Engineering strategy, embedding automation-first principles, modern engineering practices, and AI-driven quality frameworks across the enterprise. You will be integrated into a dynamic and high-performing Enterprise Technology Services portfolio, where you will report directly to the Head of Enterprise Engineering. You will play a critical part in influencing technology roadmaps, driving reusable QE patterns, and ensuring accountability for quality outcomes from concept to production.

You’ll oversee the development and uplift of QE platforms, frameworks, governance, and metrics—building foundational capabilities that accelerate delivery and improve operational reliability. As a senior leader, you’ll collaborate closely with architecture, product, and engineering teams while contributing to strategic decision-making and promoting a high-performance culture.

Key responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Transformation

• Lead the transformation of Coles’ QE capability into a strategic enabler of speed, resilience, and innovation.
• Define, evolve, and execute the enterprise QE strategy aligned with Coles' technology vision.
• Embed automation-first and AI-driven testing practices, driving adoption across diverse portfolios.
• Influence technology roadmaps and partner with architecture and product teams to shift quality left and accelerate delivery.

QE Platform & Framework Ownership

• Build, enhance, and maintain QE frameworks, platforms, and reusable patterns.
• Embed QE early in delivery cycles to support rapid, high-quality product launches.
• Lead service virtualization, continuous testing, and automation capability uplift across teams.

Governance, Metrics & Operational Excellence

• Establish and operationalize key QE metrics, dashboards, and governance for defect reduction and cost optimization.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory obligations, including SOCI, and strengthen quality controls across the enterprise.
• Oversee quality outcomes for critical production operations, ensuring reliability and performance at scale.

Leadership, Enablement & Industry Insight

• Build capability pathways and training programs to uplift QE specialists and quality analysts.
• Stay ahead of evolving QE trends, including AI-driven testing and cloud-native architectures.
• Act as a key leader within the technology organization, fostering a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.

About you and your skills:

You are an influential, forward-thinking leader with:

• 15+ years’ overall experience, including 10+ years in senior technology leadership roles within agile, product-centric environments.
• Proven success delivering large-scale QE transformation programs within complex enterprise environments.
• Expertise implementing automation-first, AI-enabled testing across distributed, hybrid‑cloud architectures.
• Advanced QE knowledge across functional, non-functional, and security testing for microservices and API-driven environments.
• Strong technical background, including:
• Functional testing across code, architecture, configuration, and database layers
• Observability tooling (AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Splunk, Sumo Logic)
• Test data management and service virtualization
• Continuous testing frameworks
• Demonstrated capability in root cause analysis, production profiling, and capacity planning.
• Excellent vendor and stakeholder management, with experience negotiating and delivering against SLAs.
• A track record of enabling high-quality, business-critical product releases.
• Exceptional communication, influencing, and relationship‑building abilities—engaging senior leaders and driving alignment without formal authority.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience in cost optimisation, forecasting, risk management, and regulatory compliance.
  
  
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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 [email protected]

Job ID: 173595

Employment Type: Full time