Quality Assurance Engineer
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The Quality Assurance Engineer has the primary responsibilities of estimating, planning, and coordinating testing activities. The Quality Assurance Engineer ensures that any quality issues and defects are promptly identified, documented, tracked, and resolved. He is responsible for developing and executing test plans as well as designing, managing, and documenting functional tests that ensure that the business’s products works smoothly for all consumers.
The Quality Assurance Engineer works on issues that require consideration of a wide variety of factors and he, therefore, has to use his own initiative and judgment to fix those issues. The Quality Assurance Engineer also creates test plans, cases, and scenarios by reproducing situations that users’ reports have availed in order to bring out a more personalized experience of the issues, subsequently realizing, and developing the best possible solutions to product issues.
Objectives and Responsibilities of the Quality Assurance Engineer
Quality Assurance: The Quality Assurance Engineer is tasked with developing and establishing quality assurance measures and testing standards for the business’s new software/products/services, as well as enhancements for the existent software/products throughout their development lifecycles.
He is also tasked with recognizing and creating awareness for process or quality issues and recording software/product defects, inclusive of documenting information useful in the debugging/resolution process, problem discovery, evaluating test data, tracking, and issues resolution.
The Quality Assurance Engineer is also responsible for evaluating proposed software/product enhancements for feasibility and ensures that testing guidelines for software/product development are adhered to. In this capacity, it is his duty to review the required software/product specifications and design documents in order to deliver timely and meaningful feedback. The Quality Assurance Engineer creates very detailed, comprehensive, and well-structured test cases and test plans.
Testing: The Quality Assurance Engineer is also in charge of estimating, prioritizing, planning, and coordinating testing activities. He defines test objectives, develops test plans and data, and creates both manual and automated test procedures. The Quality Assurance Engineer is tasked with performing functional testing, regression testing, and end-to-end testing on all of the business’s software/products.
The Quality Assurance Engineer performs these tests against detailed specifications with a focus on calculation validation. In this capacity, the Quality Assurance Engineer also engages in the generation of test data and metrics and the analysis of results. He is responsible for ensuring that testing activities lead the software/product into meeting the business’s requirements and performance expectation, fulfilling consumer needs and requirements, and identifying any existent or potential issues.
The Quality Assurance Engineer will then convey information of test progress, test results, and any other relevant information to senior quality assurance teams and relevant project managers.
Analytics: The Quality Assurance Engineer has an analytical role where he is in charge of analyzing formal test results for the purpose of discovering and reporting any bugs, defects, errors, and operational flaws. After thorough analysis of the software/product, the Quality Assurance Engineer drafts and delivers reports, recommendations, and alternatives that address the issues as well as identify potential trouble areas in the software/product to the relevant management.
He further monitors software/product performance after implementation of the recommended solution in order to prevent the reoccurrence of similar issues and to ensure the efficiency of the software/product.
Collaboration: The role of the Quality Assurance Engineer is a collaborative role and, as such, he collaborates with software/product development personnel in testing activities. He also interacts with consumers in order to gain a clear understanding of their requirements as well as software/product issues affecting their use. In this position he also acts as the consumers’ advocate to senior quality assurance management in regard to quality issues.
Knowledge: The Quality Assurance Engineer maintains an understanding of any of the business’s technologies such as databases, web servers, operating systems, and so forth, in order to address quality issues of the business’s technological products/outputs such as software more effectively. He also conducts regular research and develops an understanding of the industry requirements for the product feature undergoing testing inclusive of their applicability to users and the requirements by users.
Other Duties: The Quality Assurance Engineer also performs similar duties and duties as delegated by the Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, Head of Quality Assurance, Director Engineering, the Chief Technology Officer, or the Employer.
Required Qualifications of the Quality Assurance Engineer
Education: The Quality Assurance Engineer has to have a bachelor’s degree in Math, Statistics, Business Development, Product Management, or any other related field. An equivalent of the same in working experience is also acceptable for the position.
Experience: The candidate for this position will have had at least 2 years of working experience in a quality assurance capacity where he participated practically in a business’s software/product, preferably working as a member of quality assurance personnel. The candidate will have gathered substantial and evident experience in functional, regression, stability performance and testing as well as an ability to influence the quality of the software/product within a business environment.
Diverse technology experience, for example, experience across databases, application platforms, delivery models, and so forth will also be welcome for the position. The candidate will also have had experience writing clear, concise, and comprehensive test cases and test plans and a hands-on experience with automated testing tools.
A suitable candidate will also have had software testing experience, running the testing functions front-to-back across either consumer or business projects. The candidate will also demonstrate knowledge of testing-methods and an ability for technical leadership in their position in order to improve the business’s testing processes and negotiate with clients.
Communication Skills: Communication skills will be essential, both in written and verbal form, for the Quality Assurance Engineer who plays a highly collaborative position. He will also need equally good listening skills. The Quality Assurance Engineer interacts with software/product development teams passing on recommendations and instructions for constant improvements.
The Quality Assurance Engineer will also need to be an excellent communicator and listener in his interactions with the business’s consumers in order to gather accurate information of software/product defects, which will serve as vital insights in software/product improvements, leading to consumer satisfaction and enhanced revenue generation for the business.
He is also required to draft regular test analysis reports and recommendations for senior quality assurance personnel and software/product development and management teams for the purpose of effectively making appropriate adjustments to software/products.
Ms Office: The Quality Assurance Engineer must demonstrate exceptional Ms Word, Ms Excel, and PowerPoint, all necessary for the creation of both visually and verbally engaging analysis reports and presentations for senior quality assurance management and relevant software/product development teams.
Analytical Skills: A candidate for this position must be passionate about research and analysis and be highly familiar with SQL and R programming. He will also have a solid understanding of scripting and be highly familiar with UI Testing. A suitable candidate will also have had experience in HTTP, JSON, JUnit, and NUnit testing frameworks as well as experience in test automation by using Python and Java. The candidate will also demonstrate high proficiency in defect management tools such as ALM and JIRA.
Interpersonal Skills: A suitable candidate must have certain personal attributes that will make him more suited for the position; he will be result-driven, be helpful and consumer oriented, be self-motivated and proactive, and be a team-builder. The candidate must also work comfortably in highly collaborative environments, be highly analytical, be a creative and strategic thinker, have exceptional problem-solving skills, and have the ability to remain calm under stress and in uncertainty.
People Skills: Being a highly interactive position, the Quality Assurance Engineer must have exceptionally good people skills. Having an ability to build and form strong bonds with others and, therefore, earning the trust of senior management, consumers, and software/product developers, ensuring smooth execution of his duties.
