Intelligent Quality Operations
Quality is currently your problem. Not because you want to own it — because there's nobody else senior enough to. So release decisions come to you, the test suite has no owner, and "are we ready to ship" is a judgement call you make with incomplete information.
This is the service that takes it off your desk. Not testers to manage. A quality function that runs and reports to you.
Should I hire a Head of QA or outsource it?
Most CTOs in this position have already tried to hire their way out. The reasons it stalls are consistent:
You don't need to win a hiring race for roles the whole market is competing over. You need the function to work.
- The search runs three to six months, and that's when it works. A Head of QA search that fails costs two quarters and you're back where you started.
- You can't justify a full-time senior hire at your headcount, but you need senior judgement — so the role gets pushed down to someone who can't set standards for engineers above their grade.
- You've been burned by a bad hire. Quality leadership is hard to interview for, and the failure only becomes visible six months in.
- You'd need to hire more than one person. A Head of QA with nobody to direct is an expensive consultant with a title.
What runs your quality function
We assemble a small team around what you actually need. Not everyone below is on every engagement.
Fractional Head of QA
Owns quality as a function. Sets the standard, runs the process, makes the release calls, and reports to you in terms you can act on. Part-time by design — most mid-market companies need senior judgement continuously and senior hours occasionally.
This is the role that changes your week. Everything else supports it.
Typical commitment
10–20 daysa month
Quality Architect
Designs the approach. Test strategy, coverage architecture, tooling decisions, and the conventions that keep the suite maintainable as the team grows.
QA Analyst
The thinking work ahead of the testing. Requirement analysis, risk assessment, test design, and acceptance criteria that don't produce arguments in refinement.
AQA Professional
Builds and maintains the automation. Suite development, pipeline integration, flake reduction, and the day-to-day work of keeping the tests trustworthy.
How it works
You approve the people before anything starts. You interview your fractional Head of QA. If they're not right, you meet someone else. This is the opposite of how staffing works, where you're assigned whoever is available and find out in week three.
Month one is concrete. By the end of it you have a current-state picture, a quality standard written down, and release reporting you didn't have before. Not onboarding — output.
Monthly, rolling, no minimum term. Most competitors want six months up front. If the function isn't working, you leave. That's a deliberate transfer of risk from you to us, and it's why month one matters.
- Commitment
- Monthly, rolling
- Minimum term
- None
- Pricing
- Per engagement, roles included
- Notice
- 30 days
How big should a QA team be?
We work with a small number of clients at a time, with a small senior team. No juniors on client work.
That's a constraint and we'd rather state it than have you discover it. It means we can't scale you from four engineers to forty inside a quarter. It also means you get the people you interviewed, on your account, for the length of the engagement — rather than a senior in the pitch and a junior in the sprint.
If you need volume capacity, we're the wrong choice and we'll say so on the first call.
The business case
Written for the conversation with your CEO or CFO.
| Building the team in-house | Intelligent Quality Operations | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to productive | Four roles to fill. Three to six months per search, then ramp | Weeks |
| Cost | Four salaries + benefits + recruitment fees + equity | Monthly fee, no employment cost |
| Risk if wrong | Termination, re-hire, two quarters lost — for each role that misses | Stop the engagement on 30 days' notice. No termination, no re-hire |
| Coverage | Complete only once every role is hired | Leadership plus the disciplines around it, from the start |
| Scales down | No | Yes |
The risk side. A defect that reaches customers in a regulated environment costs more than a year of this engagement. So does a release date missed twice in front of a board. Those are the numbers this service is actually competing against — not a salary line.
How pricing works
Priced per engagement, with the roles included. Monthly, rolling, no minimum term.
What sets the number
Which roles are on the engagement
Not everyone is on every engagement. You pay for the roles you agreed.
The size of your estate
How much software there is to own, and how much of it is under test today.
How much of it is in scope
The whole quality function, or one part of it while you keep the rest.
Related
- QA Consulting & Modernizationif you're not yet sure what's wrong
- Test Architecture & QA Platform Engineeringwhen the framework is the constraint
- AI Maturity Modelhow we measure where you are
- AI-Native Delivery Frameworkthe operating model behind the function