QA Engineer
Location: Manchester
Contract: Full-time, fixed-term
Hours: 37.5 hours per week
Department: Product Management
Reports to: Product Team Lead
We are looking for a QA Engineer to join a collaborative Product Management team responsible for building, running, and maintaining bespoke software products hosted on cloud platforms.
The QA Engineer will be responsible for ensuring that software products meet specified requirements and maintain a high standard of quality throughout their lifecycle. The role will primarily support a key business-critical product, with opportunities to contribute across other products within the wider portfolio.
The role combines automated testing, manual testing, and exploratory testing, with a strong focus on identifying defects, validating system behaviour, and providing confidence in software releases.
Key Responsibilities
- Write and maintain automated test suites to ensure products remain reliable and correct throughout their lifecycle.
- Perform manual and exploratory testing to verify system behaviour, identify defects, and uncover edge cases.
- Test across a range of areas, including:
- Service APIs
- User interfaces
- Databases
- Individual code units
- Work closely with software developers throughout the development lifecycle to ensure quality is built into solutions from the outset.
- Participate in collaborative activities including 3 Amigos sessions, demonstrations, code reviews, and other agile ceremonies.
- Act as a quality gatekeeper throughout the delivery pipeline, ensuring products meet the required standards before deployment.
- Communicate effectively with stakeholders, business analysts, users, developers, and platform engineers to understand requirements and agree appropriate solutions.
- Identify and apply the most appropriate testing approaches to provide efficient and effective quality assurance.
Essential Skills and Experience
- Experience writing and maintaining automated tests using Java and/or JavaScript/TypeScript.
- Experience using Cypress or a similar automated testing framework.
- Proven experience in manual and exploratory testing, including validating implementations against specified requirements and identifying edge-case defects.
- The ability to determine appropriate testing activities and approaches to provide effective quality assurance.
- Experience working collaboratively within an Agile development team.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Desirable Experience
- Experience of Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) testing.
- Experience testing cloud-based software products and services.
- Familiarity with modern software development and continuous delivery practices.
Working Environment
This role would suit a QA Engineer who enjoys working closely with developers and other technical and business stakeholders, takes a proactive approach to quality, and is comfortable combining automated and exploratory testing techniques within an Agile environment.