QA Lead Engineer

Encoura’s success is directly a function of talent. We are serious about hiring the best talent possible in creating our crew that is incredibly passionate and dedicated to building the next-gen ecosystem of systems and products that will improve the student experience across the entire college and career planning lifecycle.

We are looking for an experienced hands-on Lead QA Engineer to join our Encourage for Educators (E4E) team. Our E4E Team is a small, distributed team of engineers focusing on modernizing and expanding our suite of products and features. You’ll work closely with Engineering and Product Leadership as you build your craft alongside other senior developers in small scrum teams. You will bring a continuous improvement mentality to the role, always on the lookout for ways to make things better across the company and within your own scope of responsibility. 

Key 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. We are fully remote! 

Role Progression

• State the expected progression of the role over a 6–12-month period. In this section you can provide some insight into what projects they will be involved with and what impact they will make to the organization. 
• Within 1 month, you will: become familiar with the QA Best Practices, Jira change management tracking, engaging in Grooming and UX sessions. Participating in daily stand up and deployments. 
• Within 3 months, you will:contributeby writing test cases, testing features, and writing defects/bugs tickets. Start taking ownership of certain QA processes and provide guidance to team members. 
• Within 6 months, you will: bedeeply knowledgeable about the product and able to drive testing initiatives. Lead discussions on improving test strategies and advocate for quality-driven development. 
• Within 1 year, you will: be an expert on the product and cross-trained for other products. Act as a QA thought leader within the organization, influencing testing standards and development processes. 

About you

• 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. 

Experience with any of the following is a plus

• 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. 

Required Qualifications

• 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. 

What sets us apart?

• Opportunity to lead the testing of a product that directly impacts universities’ ability to engage with prospective students. 
• Be part of a company at the forefront of technology in the higher education space. 
• Collaborative and energetic work environment with other motivated, career-driven professionals 
• 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. 

About Us

Encoura’s mission is to empower students and institutions to create meaningful connections so everyone can make the most informed decisions to achieve their goals. Since 1972, the company has evolved its products and services to better represent the link between students and higher education institutions and to create the highest probability of student success. 

With the launch of the Encoura platform in 2017, the company provides custom technology solutions that combine Eduventures research, data science, strategic enrollment, and multichannel marketing services to over 2,000 higher ed institutions. The company also offers Encourage® —the nation’s largest free college and career planning program used by millions of high school students and educators nationwide. 

It is the policy of the Company to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information. All applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S. 

Encoura endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability and need an alternative method for applying, please contact the Talent Team. 

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