Position Description

SrQuality Assurance Engineer 12-month Contract (Fully Remote)

Position summary

NWEA Senior Quality Assurance Engineer provides both technical leadership and a force to grow and sustain NWEA’s positive, high-energy technology company culture. The Senior Quality Assurance Engineer works to ensure the productivity, reliability, and accuracy of the systems and data usedby NWEA clients and internal users.This position will focus on reviewing requirements and specifications, creating test plans, designing detailed test specifications,and writing test automation that effectively evaluatesNWEA’s very complex system of applications, interfaces, and databases. This position must be adaptable to changing technology environments and work collaboratively with all participants in a software development project. The Senior Quality Assurance Engineer may be called up on to fulfill functions related to software development that are not specifically software testing, such as requirements fathering, producing documentation, coordinating integration testing, leading test strategies, and mentoring other QA Engineers. This position provides technical guidance and serves as a mentor/resource to the more junior level Quality Assurance Engineer roles.

This position is for the product development team and will focus on multiple aspects of testing for product features from data pipelines to robust UIs to APIs using cloud data platforms (AWS, Azure, Snowflake, etc). This individual will focus on helping build high-quality, reliable, accurate, consistent, and architecturally sound systems that are aligned with our data business needs.

Responsibilities

• Create test plans and test strategies using project requirements and coordinate their review
• Design test strategies that cover all aspects of testing: unit, smoke, regression, functional, integration, performance, and security tests
• Design, implement, and maintain test automation infrastructure in collaboration with the agile team to provide measurable test coverage
• Provide accurate time estimates for testing tasks
• Support and advise internal teams on the principles of data quality and how data quality can be analyzed and measured across systems
• Collaborate with quality engineers to resolve software defects, advise on building test automation and capture data quality metrics
• Provide reports on the progress of test development and test execution, including test coverage and defect metrics
• Analyze the results of testing and submit defect reportsand lead the defect triage process
• Contribute to tools evaluation and selection for quality assessment to maintain continuous improvement efforts
• Evaluate processes and coordinate with others to provide recommendations for standards, guidelines, and procedures
• Create and maintain documentation for quality assurance procedures
• Participate in production support and on-call rotation for the services owned by the team
• Mentors less experienced engineers in understanding the ‘big picture’ of company objectives, constraints, inter-team dependencies, etc.

• Collaborate with project architects and cross-functional team members/vendorsand assist team members to prove the validity of new software technologies
• Engage and improve NWEA’s software development methodology
• Promote AGILE processes among development and the business, including facilitation of scrums
• Have ownership over the things you build, help shape the product and technical vision, direction, and how we iterate
• Work closely with your product and design teammates for improved stability, reliability, and quality
• Perform other duties as assigned to ensure the success of the team and the entire organization
• Run numerous experiments in a fast-paced, analytical culture so you can quickly learn and adapt your work
• Promote a positive engineering culture through teamwork, engagement, and empowerment
• Function as the tech lead for various features and initiatives on the team
• Integrate test automation into CI/CD pipelines for services owned by team byfollowingsecure development practices

Skills and abilities

• Proficient with coding languages such as java, javaScript, and goLang.
• Ability to use test automation tools like Mocha, Nightwatch, Cypress, JMeter, and k6
• Ability to execute performance/load/stress tests with both web and client applications
• Ability to test on a variety of operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, and iOS
• Proficiency with Cloud platform technologies:
• AWS Lambda, Terraform, SNS, SQS, etc.
• Azure .NET Core, Azure Functions, Kendo Libraries, etc.
• Demonstrable knowledge of AWS and Data Platforms: lambda, DynamoDB, S3, Snowflake, Postgres SQL, SQL Server, MongoDB
• Experience working in a collaborative team of application developers and source code repositories
• Ability to test multi-tier, web-based applications
• Demonstrated ability to implement and maintain an automation infrastructure used by other testers.
• Demonstrated ability to follow through with all tasks, promises, and commitments
• Ability to communicate and work effectively within priorities
• Ability to advocate ideas and objectively participate in design critiques
• Ability to work under tight timelines in a fast-paced environment
• Understanding software development methodologies and principles
• Ability to assess the effectiveness of processes and procedures and recommend improvements
• Strong technical leadership and mentorship ability, including software developers

Competencies

• Customer focus: builds strong customer relationships and delivers customer-centric solutions
• Tech savvy: anticipates and adopts innovations in business-building technology applications
• Nimble learning: actively learns through experimentation when tackling new problems, using both successes and failures as learning fodder
• Action-oriented: takes on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm
• Instills trust: gains the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity
• Optimizes work processes: knows the most effective and efficient processes to get things done, with a focus on continuous improvement
• Drive results: consistently achieves results, even under tough circumstances
• Communicates effectively: develops and delivers multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences

Education and experience

• Minimum B.S. degree in computer science or a related field;or an equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered in lieu of a degree
• Minimum five years quality assurance experience including at least two years testing multi-tier, web-based applications
• Experience with critical data validation including accuracy of formulae and algorithms used in the processing and reporting of stored data
• Proven experience working across multiple tiers of an application, including a database, network, operating system, and containers
• Proven leadership experience as a SCRUM master or other lead role on a technical team