Dir Quality Engineering

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students’ potential and extend teachers’ capabilities.

HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com

We are seeking a highly experienced and visionary Director of Quality Engineering to lead our Quality Engineering (QE) team in Pune. With over 60+ engineering professionals, this leader will be responsible for driving engineering excellence, operational efficiency, and AI-led transformation to accelerate product delivery and quality across our Platform and Curriculum portfolios.

This is a mission-critical leadership role focused on building a world-class engineering hub in Pune. The ideal candidate will bring deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, exceptional people leadership, and a passion for innovation.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Provide on-the-ground leadership for all QE teams in Pune, ensuring strong engagement, alignment, and execution.
• Develop and execute a strategy to elevate engineering maturity, strengthen delivery discipline, and scale operational excellence.
• Serve as a key member of the global engineering leadership team, driving alignment across geographies and business units.

• Stakeholder Collaboration – Engage with cross-functional teams, including product managers and business leaders, to align technical efforts with company objectives.

AI-Driven Transformation

• Lead adoption and integration of AI, autonomous testing solutions, and agentic workflows to improve efficiency, accuracy, and delivery velocity.
• Champion innovation in automation frameworks, intelligent observability, and predictive analytics across QE.
• Evaluate and drive implementation of advanced tooling and platforms to enhance productivity.

Delivery & Execution

• Oversee roadmap delivery for Platform and Curriculum initiatives, ensuring commitments are met with speed, reliability, and quality.
• Establish strong governance, release management rigor, and continuous improvement practices.
• Partner closely with Product, Architecture, Engineering, and Program teams to ensure seamless end-to-end delivery.
• Risk Management & Problem Solving – Identify technical challenges, resolve bottlenecks, and mitigate risks affecting software delivery.

People Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of 60+ QE professionals, including managers and senior managers.
• Build leadership succession, strengthen technical depth, and foster a high-performance culture.
• Drive talent development, hiring strategy, and organizational growth for the Pune engineering hub.

Operational Excellence

• Implement standardized processes, quality metrics, automation strategies, and best practices across teams.
• Drive efficiency improvements and cost optimization without compromising quality.

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software quality engineering, with at least 7+ years in leadership roles overseeing QA/QE or Platform Engineering.
• Proven experience managing large engineering teams across geographies, preferably 50+ team members.
• Demonstrated success leading AI/automation initiatives within engineering or quality organizations.
• Deep expertise in modern testing strategies, CI/CD pipelines, cloud-native architectures, and tooling.
• Strong understanding of SDLC, release governance, and large-scale program execution.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and leadership presence.
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced, matrixed global environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in building or scaling engineering centers of excellence.
• Background in EdTech, SaaS, or large-scale platform development.
• Familiarity with agentic AI systems, LLM-driven testing, or autonomous solutions.

The Information Technology organization is transforming to realize our mission: Become a leader in HMH’s digital transformation, and as a strategic partner, innovate and deliver highest value, competitive advantage solutions across all corporate and business functions. Our ambition is to be a digital leader through innovation and develop and deliver leading edge technology such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence to solve some of HMH’s greatest operational business challenges. Our professionals will have business relevant skills to connect our HMH partners to technologies that propel the businesses to deliver the greatest value for HMH and our customers.

We are building a team of IT professionals with an insatiable appetite to learn, a relentless focus on customer service, a technological curiosity toward future possibilities, and a creativity in solving business challenges with leading technologies. Our team will find ways to work together, create a sense of community where it’s safe to take risks and learn together, develop our careers, and all have an opportunity to work on new technologies. We will work together, learn together and have fun together. As a team, we will lead HMH’s digital transformation.