Sr. QA Engineer / Manager

About iPUMPNET & This Role

Pump Academy Private Limited (PAPL) builds iPUMPNET an advanced Industrial IIoT platform for real-time monitoring, optimization, and predictive analytics of pumping infrastructure. Quality is not a gate at the end of our pipeline — it is woven into every layer of our platform, from field hardware and embedded firmware to cloud services, AI models, and operator dashboards.

As a Senior QA Engineer / Manager, you will be the quality conscience of the entire iPUMPNET technology organization. You will design, build, and lead a robust testing and quality assurance framework that spans PAPL's four technology departments — AI/ML, Hardware & Embedded Systems, Software Engineering, and IT Infrastructure — ensuring every release of iPUMPNET meets the highest standards of reliability, accuracy, and safety for mission-critical utility operations.

This is an opportunity to build a QA function from the ground up in a fast-scaling industrial technology startup, with direct impact on product quality, customer satisfaction, and PAPL's reputation as an industry leader.

Key Responsibilities

1. QA Strategy & Framework

Design and implement a comprehensive QA strategy across the full iPUMPNET technology stack — hardware, embedded firmware, cloud software, AI/ML models, APIs, web dashboards, and mobile applications.

Establish a Test Centre of Excellence at PAPL — defining standards, processes, tooling, and quality metrics for all technology teams.

Develop and maintain a Master Test Plan covering functional, integration, regression, performance, load, security, and user acceptance testing.

Build a shift-left quality culture — integrating testing practices into design and development cycles, not just at release.

2. Software & Platform Testing

Lead end-to-end testing of the iPUMPNET cloud web application platform built on ASP.NET/C#, including:

– Real-time pump monitoring dashboards and multi-site asset management interfaces

– Industrial analytics dashboards and energy analytics modules

– REST APIs and JSON data communication layers

– SQL and time-series database integrity and query performance

– SaaS platform features — multi-tenancy, customer onboarding workflows, sensor template automation

Design and execute regression suites to protect platform stability across rapid release cycles.

Validate integration with third-party platforms including vibration analytics systems, predictive analytics platforms, and SCADA integrations.

Lead performance and load testing — simulating data ingestion from hundreds of simultaneous pumping stations.

3. IIoT & Edge System Testing

Define testing protocols for industrial data acquisition hardware, embedded firmware, and edge gateway systems — validating data accuracy, communication reliability, and fault tolerance under real-world field conditions.

Develop test procedures for industrial communication protocols including MQTT, Modbus, RS-485, and REST/HTTP data transmission.

Validate edge-to-cloud data pipelines for data integrity, latency, and completeness across diverse field environments.

Coordinate with the Hardware & Embedded Systems team to establish firmware validation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing practices.

4. AI/ML Model Validation

Design validation frameworks for AI/ML models deployed within iPUMPNET — including pump efficiency analysis, predictive maintenance alerts, pump scheduling optimization, energy analytics, and anomaly detection models.

Define metrics for model accuracy, precision, recall, drift detection, and real-world performance against ground-truth operational data.

Validate data engineering pipelines for completeness, schema compliance, and data quality prior to model training.

Establish regression testing for AI model outputs to prevent silent degradation across deployments.

5. Mobile & O&M Application Testing

Lead testing of the iPUMPNET mobile Operations & Maintenance (O&M) application, including facial attendance features, field workflows, and offline data synchronization.

Design test cases covering diverse device types, network conditions, and field usage scenarios.

6. Security & Compliance Testing

Coordinate security testing and vulnerability assessments for the iPUMPNET cloud platform and industrial communication layers.

Define and execute penetration testing protocols aligned with OT/IIoT cybersecurity requirements.

Ensure QA processes support PAPL's standards compliance goals including ISO and CMMI frameworks.

Aware of PAPL’s ISO-aligned management systems: Quality Management System (QMS – ISO 9001), Environmental Management System (EMS – ISO 14001), Information Security Management System (ISMS – ISO 27001), and Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSMS – ISO 45001).

7. Test Automation

Build and maintain automated testing pipelines integrated into PAPL's CI/CD workflows.

Select and implement appropriate automation frameworks for web (Selenium/Playwright), API (Postman/RestAssured), mobile (Appium), and performance testing (JMeter/k6).

Define automation coverage goals and progressively expand automated regression and smoke test suites.

8. Team Leadership & Cross-Department Collaboration

Lead and mentor a growing QA team — setting clear goals, developing skills, and building a high-performance testing culture.

Partner with Software Engineering, AI/ML, Hardware, and IT Infrastructure teams to embed quality checkpoints throughout the development lifecycle.

Own the defect lifecycle — triage, prioritization, root cause analysis, and resolution tracking in collaboration with engineering leads.

Report quality metrics and testing status to technology leadership and project stakeholders.

Required Qualifications & Experience

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electronics Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.

ISTQB certification (Foundation or Advanced) strongly preferred. Relevant cloud or automation certifications valued.

Experience

12-18 years in software quality assurance, with at least 6 years in a senior or leadership QA role.

Experience testing complex, data-intensive platforms — ideally in industrial automation, IoT, utilities, or operational technology (OT) domains.

Hands-on experience with cloud platform testing — Azure, AWS, or GCP hosted services.

Proven track record building QA frameworks and test automation pipelines from the ground up.

Experience with API testing, time-series data validation, and real-time data system testing.

Exposure to AI/ML model validation or data quality testing is a significant advantage.

Experience with embedded firmware testing or hardware-software integration testing is a plus.

Technical Skills

Test Automation: Selenium, Playwright, Appium, Postman, RestAssured

Performance & Load Testing: JMeter, k6, Locust

CI/CD Integration: Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions

Database Testing: SQL, time-series database validation (InfluxDB, TimescaleDB, or similar)

Bug Tracking & Test Management: JIRA, Azure DevOps, TestRail, or similar

Industrial Protocols: Familiarity with MQTT, Modbus, REST/HTTP data validation

Security Testing: OWASP principles, API security, basic penetration testing

Programming: Python or JavaScript for test scripting; familiarity with C# a plus

Soft Skills & Mindset

Meticulous attention to detail with the ability to think like both an end-user and a field engineer.

Systems thinker — able to understand quality risks across a complex multi-layer IIoT platform.

Strong communication skills — able to clearly articulate defect impact, quality risks, and testing status to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Proactive quality advocate — you raise quality issues early and constructively, and propose solutions.

Comfortable working in fast-moving startup environments with evolving requirements and rapid release cycles.

What Success Looks Like

Within 60 days, you will have audited PAPL's current testing practices, identified critical quality gaps, and published a QA Transformation Roadmap. Within 6 months, automated regression suites will be running in CI/CD, AI/ML model validation frameworks will be established, and PAPL's defect escape rate to production will have measurably dropped. Within a year, iPUMPNET will be operating under a mature, end-to-end quality management system — a foundation for scaling deployments to hundreds of utilities with confidence.

What We Offer

An opportunity to build PAPL's QA function from scratch and set quality standards for one of India's most innovative IIoT platforms.

Exposure to a uniquely diverse technology stack — cloud software, AI/ML, industrial hardware, embedded systems, and field deployments.

A collaborative, mission-driven engineering culture that values rigour, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Competitive compensation and growth opportunities.

The chance to work on real-world deployments impacting water utilities, wastewater systems, and industrial facilities — systems that matter

Green-Tech Innovation: Lead the charge in reducing the carbon footprint of massive industrial utilities through AI-driven energy saving

Direct access to PAPL's technology leadership and meaningful influence over product quality outcomes.

A culture that values innovation, research, patents, and continuous learning