QA Tester

Job Introduction

**QA Tester - Digital & IT**
**Grade 7 (£44,075 - £49,282)**
**Temporary** **2 years fixed, full time - 37 hours per week**

**Location**: Any suitable location within the City of Wolverhampton (Flexible workstyle)

The City of Wolverhampton Council is seeking to recruit a highly motivated and detail-oriented QA Tester to join our dynamic and innovative Digital & IT team.

As a QA Tester, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring the highest quality, reliability, and performance of our cutting-edge software solutions. Working within a collaborative Agile environment, you will partner closely with development, product, and business teams to deliver exceptional user experiences. You will be instrumental in identifying issues before they impact users and will contribute to a culture of continuous improvement and quality excellence.

**Key Responsibilities**:

- Design, develop, and execute comprehensive test plans, test cases, and test scripts for new features, enhancements, and existing functionalities, including functional, non-functional, regression, UI, API, performance, and exploratory testing.
- Accurately identify, document, track, and prioritise defects, working closely with developers for timely resolution.
- Collaborate within an Agile Scrum team, participating in daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives.
- Contribute to the development and maintenance of automated test suites, integrating them into our CI/CD pipelines.
- Act as a quality gatekeeper, advocating for best practices in software testing and contributing to the continuous improvement of our QA processes.
- Report on test coverage, risks, and blockers, providing clear insights to stakeholders.

**Essential Skills & Experience**:

- Proven professional experience in a QA Tester, Software Tester, or Test Analyst role.
- Strong proficiency in manual testing techniques and a solid understanding of software testing principles.
- Demonstrated experience working effectively within Agile/Scrum development environments.
- Comprehensive understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC).
- Ability to create clear, concise, and comprehensive test plans, test cases, and defect reports.
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with a keen eye for detail.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate technical issues to both technical and non-technical audiences.

**Desirable Skills**:

- Hands-on experience with test automation frameworks and tools such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Postman, JMeter, or similar.
- Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (e.g., JavaScript, Python, C#).
- Experience with API testing tools and methodologies.
- Knowledge or experience with performance, load, and stress testing.
- Basic SQL knowledge for data validation.
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and integrating automated tests.
- ISTQB certification or similar.

**What We Offer**:

- The opportunity to work on innovative projects that make a real difference to the City of Wolverhampton.
- A supportive and collaborative team environment.
- Flexible working arrangements.
- Commitment to staff development and continuous professional growth.
- 26 days annual leave
- Employee Benefits scheme

If you are passionate about quality assurance and eager to contribute to the delivery of high-quality digital solutions for the council, we would love to hear from you.

For full details of the responsibilities and requirements of this role please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification.

**Our working arrangements**

All council roles are allocated to either a fixed, field or flexible work style. Some roles are agile which enable and empower employees to maximise their performance and productivity, whilst maintaining a healthy work life balance. Roles with a fixed workstyle work in a fixed permanent council location. Roles with a field workstyle are usually allocated where employees are required to be out working in the community with a minimum requirement for 'touch down' space at any council location. Roles with a flexible workstyle have a flexible base location to meet the needs of the business and employees can work from a mixture of home or any council office, partner/client, or external location, as required to meet service requirements.

For more information about working for our organisation including the culture of the Council, the Council plan and vision, staff equality forums, core HR policies and much more please click **here**.

**Diversity**

Our status as a Disability Confident Employer showcases our commitment to people with disabilities or health conditions, advocating for their opportunities and potential.

We've received the Stonewall Gold Award, emphasising our dedication to the LGBT+ community by nurturing an inspiring, inclusive, and equal workplace.

As of March 2023, the RACE Code Quality Mark s