About tonies:
Joining our tonies team means being part of an inspiring mission to create innovative and meaningful experiences for children around the world. Together, we’re shaping the future of play, learning, and imagination.
We are looking for a Senior End User Testing (EUT) Manager to lead the final and most critical phase of our product lifecycle: ensuring our integrated solutions truly work for our customers. This is a quality-focused senior role dedicated to the verification and validation of product readiness across our entire ecosystem. Whether it’s the software interface, the internal electronics, the physical mechanics, or the durability of materials, you are the final checkpoint before our products reach the hands of our customers, with a particular focus on software-related elements of the final user experience.
While you are a champion for the user, it is important to note that this is not a User Research or Market Research role. Your focus is not on conducting in-depth interviews or usability studies to discover user barriers; rather, it is on bridging the gap between technical delivery (across hardware and software) and business value through rigorous, structured acceptance testing of the physical and digital product as a whole.
In this role, you will act as the ultimate guardian of quality from the customer’s perspective. You’ll sit at the intersection of Product, Engineering (Primarily firmware), Business and Quality Assurance stakeholders, transforming complex technical requirements into intuitive, real-world testing scenarios. Success in this role means building a culture of rigorous acceptance, where "done" only happens when the total product solution meets the business's high-quality standards in a real-world environment.
Own the E2E EUT Strategy: Define and evolve the end-to-end user testing framework for integrated products (Hardware + Software), establishing clear entry/exit criteria and quality gateways for all releases.
Closely integrate with the overall Firmware release process: to help us release faster and in higher quality.
Bridge Multi-Disciplinary Teams: Act as the primary liaison between Software, Electronics, and Mechanical Engineering teams to ensure that the interplay between firmware, sensors, and physical materials meets operational expectations.
Manage and collaborate with external partners such as testing agencies and other external quality vendors.
Validate Product Integrity: Translate complex product requirements into actionable, real-world test scenarios that validate not just software performance, but the functional reliability of electronics and physical mechanics in a customer’s environment.
Execution Leadership: Oversee the planning, scheduling, and execution of UAT cycles for new product launches and updates, ensuring they are completed on time without compromising the depth of testing across all components (e.g., connectivity, material durability, and mechanical response).
Defect Advocacy & Triage: Lead the cross-functional defect triage process, using business judgment to prioritize fixes for software bugs, mechanical inconsistencies, or electronic failures before go-live.
Process Innovation: Drive the modernization of EUT through structured feedback loops and the selection of best-in-class testing tools to accelerate the path to production for both digital and physical components.
User Training & Support: Recruit and support customers or business users participating in testing, providing the structured scripts and clarity they need to provide high-quality functional feedback on the total product experience.
Strategic Reporting: Provide structured, data-driven insights to senior leadership on product readiness, technical risks (across SW and HW), and overall quality of the release.
Environment & Data Management: Collaborate with DevOps, Quality assurance and Hardware Engineering to ensure stable testing environments that accurately simulate the customer’s home ecosystem, including representative hardware samples and secure test data.
8+ years of experience in Quality Assurance (QA) or User Acceptance Testing (UAT), with a proven track record in integrated hardware/software product delivery (e.g., IoT, consumer electronics, or smart toys).
Strategic Mindset: Proven ability to design end-user testing strategies that focus on functional validation and high-quality delivery standards for complex, multi-component products.
Technical Versatility: Familiarity with the unique testing challenges of software-controlled hardware, including firmware updates, electronic connectivity, and mechanical stress testing from a user's perspective.
Strong Communicator: A talent for "translating" between technical developers, mechanical engineers, and non-technical business users to align on acceptance criteria.
Agile Expertise: Deep familiarity with Agile/Scrum methodologies and how to integrate hardware testing cycles into rapid digital delivery timelines.
Analytical Rigor: Proficiency with test management tools (e.g., JIRA, TestRail, Zephyr) and a data-driven approach to reporting on defect trends across both physical and digital domains.