Description
Position Summary

Note: This is a fully remote, work from home role. Qualified candidates from all time zones are encouraged to apply!
The Senior Quality Assurance Engineer works within NWEA's Product Engineering (PE) Department to ensure the productivity, reliability and accuracy of the systems and data used within the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) computerized testing and reporting applications. This position reviews requirements and specifications, creates test plans and designs detailed test specifications that effectively evaluate MAP's very complex system of applications, interfaces and databases.
PE projects operate under tight and critical deadlines. The Senior Quality Assurance Engineer must be able to develop and execute test plans to ensure products meet requirements, design specifications, and quality standards.
Responsibilities

• Communicate plans, status, and issues to lead QA engineers and managers
• Create test plans and coordinate their review
• Create, document and execute test cases to provide coverage of project requirements
• Perform smoke tests, regression, functional, and automated tests
• Designs, implements, and maintains the automation infrastructure that can be leveraged by other staff
• Increase script coverage using the established automation infrastructures and framework
• Provide reports on the progress of test development and test execution, including requirements coverage and defect metrics
• Work with Systems Engineering and DBAs to ensure that test environments are available and appropriately configured and populated with test data
• Analyze the results of testing and submit defect reports
• Review system and operational documentation
• Effectively integrate the quality assurance engineering and analysis functions on all projects
• Contribute to tools evaluation and selection for quality assessment to maintain continuous improvement efforts
• Create and maintain documentation for quality assurance procedures
• Assess the quality of application development projects
• Test new programs, tools and techniques for acceptability, usability, and performance as documented; make recommendations as necessary
• Evaluate processes and coordinate with others to provide recommendations for standards, guidelines and procedures
• Review the quality of unit testing, functional testing, system integration testing and user testing

Skills and Abilities

• Demonstrated ability to follow through with all tasks, promises, and commitments
• Ability to take the point of view of the student, proctor and partner
• Ability to provide estimates of testing effort based on requirements and solution information
• Ability to test multi-tier, web-based applications
• Ability to perform SQL queries (data testing directly against the database) on various database servers (especially MS SQL Server and PostgreSQL)
• Knowledge common coding languages used for test automation such as Java, Python, C#, C++, HTML
• Demonstrated ability to implement and maintain an automation infrastructure used by other testers.
• Ability to test on a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX
• Technical aptitude to develop skills using available tools and software for the purpose of testing
• Ability to use test automation tools like Selenium and JMeter
• Ability to execute performance/load/stress tests with both web and windows client applications is a plus
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• High level of initiative and self-motivation
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with a wide range of individuals
• Ability to organize time effectively, determine priorities, and move work forward
• Ability to assess the effectiveness of processes and procedures and recommend improvements
• Ability to understand when to ask for help
• Must be able to perform the physical and intellectual requirements of the role, with or without accommodation

Competencies

• Instill trust : gain the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity
• Communicate effectively : develop and deliver multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences
• Customer focus : build strong customer relationships and deliver customer-centric solutions
• Drive results : consistently achieve results, even under tough circumstances

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
• Experience reviewing requirements for testability and clarity