Quality Assurance Architect

QA Architect

Whitehall Resources are looking for a QA Architect. This role is hybrid working with 3 days per week based onsite in either Sheffield or Birmingham, and the remainder remote working, for an initial 12-month contract. ***Inside IR35***

Job Description:

The role will report to the Cyber QA Practice lead and will be responsible for supporting the establishment and development of Cyber's Professional Testing Practise, contributing to its strategic direction and helping to drive improvements across all facets of testing across Cyber. The role will involve working closely with a wide range of stakeholders including Cybersecurity project teams, Control Owners, and the business.

Responsibilities:

• Define and deliver, with guidance from the QA Lead, the Testing Strategy, QA Maturity Framework and QA standards to be used across Cyber, including the frameworks, processes, methodologies and tooling that should be used and adopted by the Cyber teams.
• Lead on the Maturity Framework assessment and definition of the remediation plan needed to meet the agreed framework levels. This includes driving the adoption of automated test practices across Cyber and assisting teams in determining the correct level of performance and stress testing to be performed. This will cover both in-house developed applications and third-party applications that are supported and maintained by the Cyber teams.
• Provide support and assistance to the Cyber QA Lead and help ensure their vision is effectively developed and implemented across the Cyber delivery teams.
• Define and deliver appropriate training for the Testing Practice members and QA professionals within the Cyber teams and monitor adoption and usage of QA tools within the existing environments.
• Provide standards and guidance for testing evidence suitable for audit review in our Regulated business environment and ensure that teams are following these guidelines and provide metrics and dashboards to support adoption tracking.
• Work with the Cyber QA lead to establish clear KPIs and OKRs for the Cyber QA Team, tracking delivery performance, quality improvements, and process efficiency.

Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience defining and delivering departmental Testing Strategies and governance frameworks including best practices across multiple teams and regions
• Proven experience in aligning testing strategy with business goals.
• 6+ years of QA experience, 2+ years in a QA Manager or QA Architect Lead role.
• Strong stakeholder management experience and the ability to influence and build partnership across Teams and Departments in order to conduct data analysis and present raw data in a simplified manner displaying trend analysis and highlighting outliers/exceptions;
• Familiar with Agile software development and DevSecOps delivery processes (burndown metrics, backlog tracking, velocity, task definition, retrospectives and defect management) and supporting tools, e.g., JIRA, Confluence, GIT, etc.
• Good verbal and written communication skills in English, including experience of managing workshops and writing best practice documentation;
• Able to work in a fast paced, team focused environment with a proven track record of delivering and completing assigned tasks as an individual and as team;
• Demonstrates a strategic leadership, change management, continuous improvement mindset with a willingness to continuously learn and share learnings with others.