A day in the life of a Quality Lead

16th October 2025
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Elizabeth Zagroba's profile
Elizabeth Zagroba

Lead DevOps Engineer - Test Automation

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Talk Description

We don't often see the nitty-gritty, everyday work live on a conference stage. It can feel like it might be boring. We do a lot of our work by ourselves. Seeing what someone's calendar looks like or what they're typing and clicking tells you more about what people do all the time at work.

As the one Quality Lead for an R&D department, Elizabeth delivers relevant information to people across many levels of the organization. Showing her work is part of the work. She reviews test automation merge requests in Python and TypeScript, grants access to repositories, and checks whether last night's pipeline revealed new information. She facilitates workshops about test strategy and story slicing, refines stories, and plans disaster recovery drills. She explains to senior leaders what they should do differently and why she is stationed on a particular team.

In this talk, Elizabeth connects her day-to-day work with the longer-term impact it has. By watching, you’ll see what it’s like to be promoted beyond the senior level, have a point of reference for your own work, and learn more about how to talk to managers who come from a different background.

By the end of this session, you'll be able to:

  • Describe what a Quality Lead’s day-to-day work involves across multiple teams and projects.
  • Explain why making your work visible helps others understand and value it.
  • Recognise what quality looks like beyond a single team and how it connects across an organisation.
  • Identify ways to choose work that aligns with business needs and your own growth.
  • Reflect on how autonomy and collaboration influence your effectiveness as a quality professional
Elizabeth Zagroba
Lead DevOps Engineer - Test Automation
Elizabeth sets out to prove that when “it should just work” it actually does. She's the go-to person for thinking critically about what’s being built and creating a common understanding.
Rosie Sherry
"You know what I want releases to be like? Smooth, fast and boring." I like. 😃

Rosie Sherry
Also thanks for this reminder: "If you have all of the information you need about a product, you don't actually need to test it. That's a waste of time. Find something else to do."

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