QA Lead Engineer

Summary

Join Encoura's Encourage for Educators (E4E) team as a Lead QA Engineer. This role involves working with a small, distributed team to modernize and expand product features. You will collaborate with engineering and product leadership, mentor other QA team members, and champion quality initiatives. Responsibilities include developing QA testing strategies, creating test plans and scripts, and ensuring quality issues are resolved. The ideal candidate possesses strong analytical and problem-solving skills, leadership experience, and Agile experience. Encoura offers a fully remote work environment and a comprehensive benefits package.

Requirements

• Strong analytical, problem-solving skills and planning skills, with the ability to perform root cause analysis and recommend corrective actions
• Demonstrated leadership experience, with the ability to mentor junior QA team members and encourage professional growth
• Ability to take ownership of QA processes, ensuring alignment with company goals and driving continuous improvement without direct supervisory responsibilities
• Able to create clear, concise, detail-oriented test plans from specifications or verbal communications
• Perform testing for new features, complex scenarios, and edge cases; conduct exploratory testing to identify defects not covered by automated test scripts; and ensure that the software meets functional and non-functional requirements across different environments
• Identify opportunities for automation, process improvements, and efficiency gains, contribute to the evolution of quality processes and best practices, and integrate quality engineering practices into the development lifecycle, ensuring quality is built into the solution from the start
• Demonstrated pattern of going beyond your test plan when you see something that looks odd, to then understand why it behaved that way, and to see if a problem exists
• Experience with Agile software development (particularly Scrum and Kanban) and JIRA
• Knowledge of best practices for agile testing on a Scrum team
• High attention to detail with proven ability to juggle multiple, competing priorities of various sizes and complexities. A record of accomplishment of making things happen in a fast-paced, dynamic environment that requires you to use your initiative, imagination, and common sense to be successful
• Excellent interpersonal skills; ability to collaborate and work successfully with teams across the organization. Excellent written and oral presentation skills
• An appreciation for pragmatism and simplicity in solutions
• Bachelor’s degree in related field, or equivalent work experience
• At lease 4-6 years of relevant work experience
• Strong understanding of GraphQL concepts (queries, mutations, resolvers, subscriptions)
• Proven experience in testing GraphQL APIs, including building and executing queries and mutations. Deep understanding of setting custom headers, analyzing schema structures, and manipulating calls to ensure API accuracy
• Hands-on experience with Postman, Apollo Explorer, or similar tools to validate GraphQL endpoints. Ability to build and maintain comprehensive GraphQL collections that support efficient manual testing
• Strong database experience and knowledge with Postgres Sql and Microsoft Sql Server

Responsibilities

• Work with the scrum team to identify testing needs and opportunities
• Work with the QA team in developing a QA testing strategy for the product, determining the appropriate balance of manual and automated tests, as well as the types of tests (UI, web service API, GraphQL, functional/performance/load)
• Provide mentorship and technical leadership to other QA team members, fostering a culture of continuous improvement
• Champion quality initiatives by driving discussions on process enhancements, best practices, and testing strategies
• Create test plans, test cases, and test scripts
• Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical personnel
• Generate innovative ideas, never say, or think "that's not my job."
• Be proactive in keeping your skills fresh
• Ability to write clear bug reports quickly and concisely
• Skilled at analyzing a product for testing
• Ensuring that quality issues and defects are appropriately identified, documented, tracked, and resolved in the defect tracking system (JIRA)
• Serve as a point of contact for QA-related concerns, ensuring alignment between QA, development, and product teams
• Ability to establish a good rapport with developers and other team members

Preferred Qualifications

• Pytest, Selenium, Playwright, or similar tools
• Postman, Kobiton, Datadog, Sentry and other web service API testing tools
• Source control systems such as Github
• Working knowledge of Windows and macOS, all major web browsers
• IOS, Android mobile devices and Linux knowledge is a plus

Benefits

• Paid holidays and generous PTO policy
• Generous benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, Paid Life and Disability, HSA, FSA
• Tuition Reimbursement, and 401k
• Flexible working environment, including remote options