Workday Testing Capability Manager - Americas

Kainos is a trusted Workday implementation and certified solution partner, providing management, integration, support, testing services, and test automation for Kainos clients. We are Workday’s largest QA testing partner and have a team of consultants, which provide services to customers around the world. Kainos has developed a range of unique tools within the Smart product set to expedite Workday delivery, including testing, data masking and auditing of Workday. 

Main purpose of the role & responsibilities in the business: 

As the Testing Capability Lead – Americas, you will be fully accountable for the quality outcomes and delivery commitments of our testing services across primarily Workday implementation projects, with an opportunity to expand into AMS support. You will build and lead a high-performing team, establish clear delivery governance, align cross-functional stakeholders on tooling and process, and serve as a senior client-facing escalation point. You will partner closely with Sales to shape opportunities, create commercially competitive estimates and proposals, and proactively generate demand to drive expansion of testing services within existing and new accounts. 

Key responsibilities include: 

• Overall responsibility to ensure delivery excellence and high customer satisfaction across all Workday testing engagements within the Americas Region. 

• Own the testing capability, coordinating across functional areas and partnering closely with PMO and Client Directors to align responsibilities, clarify ownership, and ensure consistent support and execution across engagements.  

• Develop and coach a high-performing team: hiring, onboarding, mentoring, performance management, and retention. 

• Drive cross-functional alignment with program leadership, functional and technical teams to ensure comprehensive test readiness. 

• Tooling and process development and adherence: standardize and drive adoption of testing approaches and templates, leveraging Kainos defined test management tools while integrating effectively with client ecosystems (commonly including JIRA). 

• Executive client partnership: facilitate testing strategy discussions, handle escalations, and present to senior stakeholders. 

•  Own demand generation for testing services, partnering with Sales to identify and shape opportunities, coown pipeline, develop estimates and SOW inputs, contribute to proposals, and drive expansion across existing and new accounts. 

• Capability development: continuous improvement to drive innovative testing solutions which set Kainos apart without impacting standards of outcomes. 

Minimum (essential) requirements: 

• Demonstrated experience leading and developing teams in a client-facing professional services environment (quality, testing, QA engineering, or ERP/SaaS delivery). 

• Strong accountability orientation with evidence of delivering measurable quality outcomes across multiple concurrent engagements. 

• Proven ability to influence and align cross-functional teams and stakeholders; effective in complex situations including negotiation and conflict resolution. 

• Commercial acumen in services: understands margin, utilization, effective rates, and how to shape scopes/estimates for competitiveness. 

• Experience partnering with Sales and contributing to proposals, estimates, and client presentations to win and expand work. 

• Testing exposure (strategy, planning, execution, defect management). Workday testing experience is a plus but not required. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable presenting to executive audiences. 

• Ability to travel to customer sites as required. 

Desirable: 

• Workday implementation and/or Workday testing experience. 

• Experience with SaaS delivery models and Workday release management. 

• Workday certification. 

• Experience with Workday Extend, Adaptive Planning, and/or Strategic Sourcing modules. 

• Experience maturing tooling and metrics (dashboards, quality scorecards) across a practice. 

People Management: 

Your role will involve managing people. Your responsibilities will include: 

• Agreeing, setting, and reviewing your and your team’s goals aligned to the business and your capability. 

• Providing support so that your and your team’s goals can be achieved. 

• Reviewing and refining goals for relevance and to keep performance on track. 

• Reviewing performance against goals and provide feedback. 

• Conducting 1:1 bi-weekly and/or project completion feedback meetings. 

• Requesting and providing regular feedback and completing performance review activities. 

• Identifying training to support your and your team’s development. 

• Pursuing and supporting career paths and progression. 

• Reviewing weekly workload forecasting (staff allocations and utilization) and ensuring appropriate coverage for implementation projects and (where applicable) AMS work. 

• Actively being involved in recruitment/interviews. 

• Reviewing attrition and retention metrics and taking action to improve engagement and retention.