Job Specification

Purpose of Position :

The Senior QA Automation Engineer will design and build a Quality Assurance Framework and standards, including processes, practices and tools supporting development and IT operations.

This role will provide QA, project management and technical guidance in the development of system and user acceptance testing strategies and plans to support business-essential applications and databases in an Agile and DevOps environment.

This role will coordinate and lead the Agile delivery of testing products, services, solutions, quality assurance and continuous improvement (QA, CI) services for the ODS.

Duties / Responsibilities :

1. QA Processes and Framework
Build and maintain a QA framework to achieve the highest possible quality of all system development work for various products.

Design and extend Development and QA frameworks, including the necessary automation.' Recommend and help implement improvements for Software QA and SDLC processes and procedures.

Research and evaluate test automation tools, as well as plan and estimate effort required to incrementally deliver targeted and streamlined automation initiatives, develop, maintain, and execute automated test cases.

Lead the quality assurance process improvements within the team.

Develop and document detailed test plans, criteria and expected results based on user requirements.

Transform functional, business, and system knowledge into effective test case planning and execution.

Develop & implement automation strategy.

Leads and promotes a load testing discipline among projects.

Identifies areas for improving the effectiveness of the testing process by assessing new system requirements and problems with previous tests;

Develops/participates in new system designs and enhancements and helps determine the approach to develop appropriate tests, including manual and automated testing processes.

The position is also accountable for maintaining an awareness of current and leading-edge technologies; and providing input and recommendations to strategic planning activities

Ability to provide authoritative quality control advice and guidance to project team members, colleagues or associates on teams and committees and monitors the financial data that projects input into the cluster's project cost estimation tool.

2. QA Development, DevOps and Support
Analyse testing, DevOps processes, standards, and best practices and drive necessary improvements Provide technical support to Test Automation tools.

Evaluate test automation tools and processes and provide recommendations to promote best practices

Create test data according to the test plan; analyse testing results and retesting until expected results are obtained; perform reviews with users and ensures client acceptability levels are met (e.g. participating in walk throughs); recommend changes to ensure acceptable testing results; retest all criteria in a live environment and recommend user sign off for implementation.

Work closely with developers, architects, product owners, product managers, and others in establishing effective test plans based on feature documentation.

Apply QA and technical expertise and engage other expertise to track and resolve testing and production issues and other IT related problems with quality deficiencies and maintain client service integrity.

Automate tests by developing test scripts, following the team's standards and guidelines.

Ensure that testing automation is under source control, documented and disaster recovery is in place.

Perform IT application tests such as unit, system, user acceptance, functional, Accessibility Ontario Disability Act (AODA), integration, regression, configuration, performance, system, load balance, and produces all supporting documentation including designing test cases, writing test scripts, providing test reports and managing the tests for automation and reuse.

Prepare, validate, automate and execute all related test cases and test scripts.

Lead the test planning activities, confirms acceptance of proposed test schedules, assigns script writing and script execution to test resources.

3. QA Culture
Be an expert on Quality Assurance approach and the Agile Testing mind-set.

Acts as a role model for creating a culture that sets superior standards and delivers on time and on budget.

Encourage the adoption of proven testing patterns and technologies to ensure timely high-quality releases.

Assist in training and mentoring of testers, developers, and product managers across the organization towards QA concepts, techniques, principles, and standards.

Participate in the development of procedural and training manuals by critiquing proposed revisions/additions on new initiatives, prepare training materials and provide training and systems familiarization to staff.

Provide QA, technical and project advice, direction and guidance to project teams in: develop test scenarios and scripts; use automated test tools; tests that conforms to technical specifications; develop performance measures and evaluate results and progress to ensure that solutions meets time, cost and quality commitments.

Staffing and Licensing :

N/A

Knowledge :

Hands-on experience with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

Knowledge and experience with Continuous Integration, Continuous Build and Continuous Deployment Practice,
Tools and trends

Experience with how Automation Testing can enable Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and DevOps strategy.

Understand the roles and activities on an Agile Team.

Full understanding of Agile Testing, DevOps and Automation Principles

Knowledge in various SDLC methodologies including Agile, and iterative approaches

Strong programming background and expertise in at least one Test Automation Platform

Four or more years of experience with agile development framework, DevOps, Test Driven Development (TDD),
Acceptance Test Driver Development (ATDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)

Experience with building and maintaining Test Automation frameworks

Experience implementing both Continuous Integration (CI) and Life Cycle Management on an automation implementation

Knowledge of QA practices including application unit, integration, functional, automation, regression, performance/load, system acceptance

Knowledge of QA methods, tools, measurement, and standards in order to develop strategies, plans, scenarios and provide QA expertise and advice to product teams.

Knowledge of business and systems analysis techniques to analyse business requirements, system and automation testing needs and create testing plans and cases to ensure compliance with business requirements

Knowledge of emerging trends, technologies in the QA, system testing, automation, regression testing, and user acceptance testing field to identify and evaluate technologies that have potential value to the enterprise and develop recommendations

Demonstrated knowledge of manual and automated quality assurance procedures

Ability to conduct detailed analysis of systems and procedures to support business requirements

Ability to assess concurrent priorities and organize workload to meet deadlines and to participate in status meetings

Experience using technical documents such as user stories, (functional/business/system) requirements, architectural design documents, database design representations, data and systems diagrams

Ability to analyse metrics, identify defects, and make recommendations to senior management

Written and oral communication skills to present technology solutions, architecture and concepts to peers and senior management.

Ability to advice regarding approaches to contentious systems architecture issues; deliver presentations to clients and stakeholders;

Knowledge of current trends in quality assurance domain, QA methodology, industry-standard testing and bug tracking tools, scripting languages, Android, iOS or other mobile application development or testing

Proven experience in the development/testing/implementation of applications, including considerable knowledge of different platforms, mobile application platforms, operating systems, environments, database technologies and languages

Excellent working knowledge of industry best practice testing automation tools including, Selenium or other automation framework.

Knowledge and understanding of front-end UI (both web and device) and API driven testing

Job requires knowledge of current development and testing tools/languages within the different frameworks and platforms and the development/testing of collaborative workspaces and systems using industry standard technologies.

Knowledge and experience with automation testing, multiple automation frameworks / scripting techniques

Provides recommendations and solutions to maximize the coverage of automated testing in a cost-effective manner

The position is expected to stay current in related I&IT technologies, testing tools, processes and frameworks.

Excellent skills in systems analysis, systems design, problem solving, project planning, test planning, creation of test cases, automation scripts and the execution of testing activities.

Good written and oral communications skills including very good consultation and negotiation skills to liaise/facilitate communications with numerous internal/external stakeholders and clients.

Proven ability to work both as a team player and a team leader, depending on nature of task or project.

Experience driving quality through process, instrumentation, requirements and testing

Experience developing test strategies, test plans and test cases

Proven experience with usability best practices; able to influence and improve user experience

Skills :

Demonstrated ability to work effectively with partners with different interests and priorities

Demonstrated effective consultation, persuasion and advisory skills to counsel clients/stakeholders

Demonstrated written and oral communication, interpersonal and negotiation skills to develop specifications, test plans, test scenarios, scripts and acceptance criteria and present to business clients, project and testing teams, cluster staff, vendors and other stakeholders to gain approvals to proceed.

Demonstrated strong oral and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate technical topics to management and non-technical audiences, as well as interface with the customer on a daily basis Analysing and problem-solving skills to:

Evaluate the results from testing against pre-defined acceptance criteria and recommend acceptance or rework of tested applications

Identify and resolve project or testing problems such as an application code not passing test criteria when problems are diverse, the causes are not apparent but require root cause analysis of the test environment and engagement of other cluster staff to eliminate the infrastructure as a cause

Assess individual projects, scope, architectural requirements and organizational impacts, and recommend best frameworks, methods, standards, procedures and solutions based on the nature of the project, its problems and the status of the work

Develop appropriate performance measures that are adaptive and responsive to address the continuous introduction of new and emerging technologies, use of unfamiliar or unproven technology, broadly defined or undefined business and systems requirements.

Freedom of Action :

Lead a range of products and ensuring they are completed on time, within budget and according to specified quality and user requirements.

Assuring ongoing compliance with quality and industry regulatory requirements

Providing expertise and guidance within the accessibility (AODA compliance requirements) process modelling, security provisions, and data management.

Making recommendations on procedures or practices to improve systems performance.

Contact with Senior management to provide expertise, plans, and solutions related to emerging technologies, technical and architectural issues;

Contact with Developers, to explore/discuss/resolve development languages, tools and environment issues;

Liaises directly with internal and external client/stakeholder groups to discuss and resolve issues, clarify requirements and provide information on progress/status of initiatives.

Liaises with other specialists to share information develop best practices, and consistent communications regarding directive, procedures and practice.

Supports teams in developing and performing QA plans, analysis, and reviews.

Provides subject matter expertise to other staff; functional guidance and supervision for staff managed by other positions.

Leads team development of components of architecture projects (e.g. information artefacts on systems development) to provide context, assign tasks, schedule meetings, review progress, assess deliverables, make recommendations, and report status to management