Lead QA Engineer

We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide.

We work directly with individuals to help them gain the skills, confidence and connections to transform their lives and shape a better world in partnership with the UK. We support them to build networks and explore creative ideas, to learn English, to get a high-quality education and to gain internationally recognised qualifications.

Working with people in over 200 countries and territories, we are on the ground in more than 100 countries. In 2021–22 we reached 650 million people.

Location: Warsaw
Department: Engineering
Contract type: Indefinite (permanent)
Closing Date: 22nd July 2024, at 23:59

Some of our benefits are:

• Enjoy a standard workday of 7.45 hours and a weekly total of 38.75 hours, allowing for a healthy work-life balance.
• Benefit from additional holidays, including a minimum of 35 days of annual leave per year, which includes public holidays. Our holiday calendar is meticulously crafted based on the public holiday lists for Poland, Belgium, and adheres to the British Council policy.
• Stay active and healthy with our Corporate Sports Card - MultiSport Light 10, which is partially funded by our Social Fund (ZFŚS).
• Avail significant discounts on our English courses and exams for both you and your immediate family members.
• Take advantage of various financial grants and holiday refunds through our Social Fund (ZFŚS), which offers both random and social assistance.
• Access our Employee Assistance Programme, providing confidential psychological support services to ensure your overall wellbeing.
• Explore diverse avenues for professional development and career advancement within our organizational structure.

You must have the legal right to work in Poland at the time of application. There is no relocation or sponsorship support.

British Council supports working in new ways such as hybrid working, subject to full approval by line management and conditional upon our ability to provide the appropriate level of service.
This may not be appropriate for all roles but can be explored at interview.

Role purpose

As Lead QA Engineer, you will drive the quality agenda within a team of other engineers and designers. Involved during the early stages and throughout the software engineering process your role is to define the quality expectations for a product or service, and the strategy for meeting that expectation. You will use your expertise to contribute to the teams’ approach to the software development process, as well as working with Product and other Engineering leads to ensure compliance with external governance and policies.

Your position works as part of a multidisciplinary team, and collaborating closely with teams of Engineering, Product, Design and Operations colleagues based around the world to build our next generation of digital systems.

Role Context

The role will be part of the Digital and Technology Directorate, which leads the British Council’s digital strategy and transformation. It creates and executes technology initiatives to fulfil the organisation’s mission and corporate priorities.

Key focus areas are:

• Creating digital products that attract and retain customers, delivering business value through digital design and delivery expertise.
• Developing and optimising digital platforms that provide seamless customer interactions and use scalable and secure capabilities.
• Enhancing digital capability across the organisation.
• Enabling growth, impact and efficiency through technology.

Accountabilities/Responsibilities:

• Provide support and mentoring to other QA engineers in the QA community of practice, professional growth, and project objectives.
• Ensure quality standards and best software testing practices are understood and adhered to, along with coaching, mentoring, influencing colleagues, and delivering sourcing and supplier management leadership across the digital enterprise.
• Participate in recruiting and hiring activities, identifying top talent and contributing to the development of a high-performing engineering team.
• Collaborate with product managers, your team, and other stakeholders to plan and lead quality on engineering stories.
• Lead on the application of standards and methods to ensure compliance and responsibility for all the stages and iterations of a software development project. Use JIRA to document, prioritize, and track defects, ensuring clear communication product/service teams for resolutions.
• Contribute to the technical design and implementation of scalable and reliable systems to support product/service delivery.
• Create detailed, comprehensive, and well-structured test plans and test cases, ensuring clarity and reproducibility. Work with other engineers to integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, promoting early defect identification and resolution. Additionally, conduct exploratory tests to identify defects not captured through automated tests, relying on creativity and domain expertise.
• Identify potential risks and vulnerabilities in systems and implement appropriate security measures to mitigate them.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards, regulations, and data privacy requirements in the design and implementation of solutions.
• Implement and maintain robust monitoring and logging mechanisms to detect and respond to potential security breaches or compliance issues.
• Collaborate with product leads and business analysts to understand customer needs.
• Proactively identify opportunities for cost optimisation and efficiency improvements in Backend systems while balancing business needs and quality standards.

Requirements of the role:

• 3+ years of experience in Quality Assurance, with a focus on both manual and automated testing in agile development environments.
• Strong proficiency in functional and performance test tools such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Appium, TestNG, and JUnit, and scripting experience in languages such as Java, Python, or JavaScript.
• Deep understanding of various testing methodologies (e.g., Black-box, White-box, Load, Stress, Performance, and Regression testing).
• Experience with testing frameworks and BDD tools like Cucumber or SpecFlow.
• Solid knowledge of RESTful APIs, able to test API endpoints, understand response codes, and validate response data.
• Familiarity with both relational and NoSQL databases, capable of writing basic queries to validate data integrity and consistency.
• Experience with CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI) to integrate and automate test suites.
• Knowledge of cross-browser testing tools and mobile application testing.
• Strong understanding of software development life cycle (SDLC) and QA's role in it.
• Skilled in defect tracking tools (e.g., JIRA, Bugzilla) and test management tools.
• Knowledge of web technologies (e.g., HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to debug and identify UI issues.
• Experience with performance testing tools (e.g., JMeter, LoadRunner)
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, able to document test cases, test plans, and defects effectively.
• Written and verbal proficiency (CEF 1) in English is required.
• Continuous learning through online courses, workshops, and industry conferences to stay updated with emerging technologies and best practices in Quality Assurance.

A connected and trusted UK in a more connected and trusted world.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Statement