Lead Software QA Analyst

Purpose

The Lead Software QA oversees the QA team and manages the end-to-end testing lifecycle including defect management and reporting. They are responsible for ensuring efficient testing processes, driving process improvements and providing leadership to QA personnel.

As the Lead Software QA Analyst, you will play a critical role in ensuring the quality and reliability of software products through comprehensive testing methodologies. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to understand product requirements, design test cases, and execute test plans to identify defects and ensure the highest level of product quality. Your expertise in manual & automation testing and test case development will be instrumental in delivering robust and user-friendly software solutions.

Location and Hours
• This position is based in the US and may be remote or hybrid.
• Must be available to work in U.S. with core hours of 9:00 am to 3:00 pm Central Time.

Functions

Key Responsibilities:

• Assign testing activities across the QA team
• Provide direction to QA engineers and help to remove blockers
• Ensure critical testing, regression, integration and UAT-support activities are adequately covered
• Co-ordinate QA activities with development team, product owners and other stakeholders.
• Monitor progress and act as the primary point of contact for stakeholders regarding defect status and testing updates.
• Mentor and develop team members
• Evaluate and integrate new tools and methodologies to enhance testing outcomes.
• Additional Responsibilities

Test Planning and Strategy:

• Collaborate with product managers and development teams to understand project requirements and define comprehensive test plans.
• Design test strategies, including scope, approach, resources, and schedule estimation, to ensure thorough test coverage.
• Identify and prioritize test cases based on risk analysis and business impact.
  

Test Case Development:

• Create detailed, comprehensive, and well-structured test cases and test scenarios based on functional specifications and user stories.
• Define test data and environment setup requirements for effective test execution.
• Maintain test case repositories and ensure documentation accuracy and completeness.

Manual Testing:

• Execute manual test cases to validate software functionality, performance, usability, and compatibility across different platforms and environments.
• Identify, isolate, document, and track software defects using bug tracking tools (Jira) and collaborate with development teams to resolve issues.
• Perform ad-hoc testing as needed to uncover unexpected behaviors and usability issues.
  

Regression Testing:

• Conduct regression testing to ensure the stability of software releases and verify that new features and enhancements do not adversely impact existing functionalities.
• Automate repetitive manual test cases where applicable to improve testing efficiency and effectiveness.
  

Quality Assurance:

• Participate in peer reviews of test cases, test plans, and other testing artifacts to ensure quality standards are met.
• Continuously monitor and evaluate testing processes and methodologies to identify areas for improvement and optimization.
  

Automated testing suites development

• Develop and document scalable automated testing suites
• Convert manual tests to automated tests
• Develop, document, run, and report on automatic tests

Safety
Ensure that the Safety policies and procedures are understood and adhered to as far as is reasonably practicable in order to ensure a safe working environment.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Responsible for ensuring the QA team is organized, effective, and applying consistent quality standards.

Reporting Relationship

• Reports to Software Development Manager
  

Qualifications & Experience:

Required:

• Minimum 5 years of experience working with software testing methodologies, best practices, test automation, using tools like Cucumber, REST-assured, Selenium, Postman etc.
• Minimum 5 years of experience testing and understanding complex engineering applications.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with keen attention to detail
• Strong communication and collaboration skills to work effectively in cross-functional teams
• Able to perform cross-browser/load/performance testing automatically
• Must be fluent in the English language
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States

Preferred

• Demonstrated experience leading, mentoring and coordinating the activities of a software QA/testing team
• Agile methodologies and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines
• XRay Test Management
• Selenium
• C# Programming

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics

• Gives and receives constructive feedback
• Ensures that regular consistent communication takes place within area of responsibility
• Ensures that important information from management is shared with employees and others as appropriate
• Self-motivated, confident and passionate
• Strong organizational and documentation skills
• Provides vision and inspiration to peers and subordinates
• Able to make decisions in conflicting situations
• Should be comfortable with ambiguity
• Able to manage a wide variety of discrete functions and services
• Able to set priorities in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment

Working Conditions

This position is considered OFFICE WORK and is characterized as follows:

• Almost exclusively indoors during the day and occasionally at night.

• Occasional exposure to airborne dust in the workplace.

• Work surface is stable and flat.

• May require occasional travel and work outside normal business hours to support audits, releases, incidents, or global operations.

Physical Activity/Requirements

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

This position is considered LIGHT work.