Senior Test Lead recruitment

A Senior Test Lead is required to oversee the quality of the development of one of our major flagship finance software products Trade Innovation +. This is an exceptional opportunity for a Senior Tester to lead the Quality Assurance effort of one of Misys' flagship global banking products, as well as lead a team of highly skilled testers. We are moving to an agile methodology in the development of this product, so it is essential candidates have experience of leading a test team in an agile methodology in a previous role.

The key responsibilites for this role are to:

(a) Actively monitor the prospective and ongoing software development activities to identify

candidates for embedded testing and/or early test analysis and preparation.

(b) Familiarise with the domain and requirements around each development and the intent

for the software to be developed.

(c) Participate in design and development meetings.

(d) Identify and propose a systematic breakdown of the test activities for each development

that reflects the risks associated with the development.

(e) Ensure testing does not purely focus on the simple functional testing of the software but

also reflects less obvious and harder to test risk factors.

(f) Identify effective test patterns that match the nature of the things to be tested.

(g) Define test data patterns to support the testing.

(h) Identify where automated or semi-automated testing is appropriate.

(i) Specify test automation and utility requirements.

(j) Define example tests that apply particular test patterns.

(k) Prepare briefs for other resources who will undertake test set designs for areas of

change.

(l) Review test sets proposed for areas of change.

(m) Undertake test set design for areas of change.

(n) Execute effective exploratory testing on the software being developed.

(o) Deliver tactical test automation and utilities to support the testing of the software.

(p) Provide knowledge transfer to and support to other test teams.

(q) Validate defects raised by test teams on areas subject to embedded testing or early test

analysis.

(r) Track defects status for defects raised by QA against developments managed out

Paddington.

(s) Lead regular defect status expediting sessions with the project managers responsible

for the delivery of the software.

(t) Where necessary expedite the progress of defects within the development organisation

by the resources nominated by the project manager.

(u) Work with other test teams to reproduced issues and demonstrate these issues to the

development team.

The core requirements for thsi role are:

a) Extensive experience of system testing within a product or software development

organisation (as opposed to user acceptance testing) in an agile methodology.

(b) Experience of ground up test identification in situations where specifications have one or

more of the following characteristics – incompleteness / inconsistency / informality /

fluidity - working from business requirements and / or system specifications.

(c) Competence in the construction and execution of SQL queries to interrogate database

states.

(d) Competence in the interpretation of XML schemas / XML and in the use of XML aware

editors to construct XML messages.

(e) Competence in the use of VBA for the preparation of advanced macros for office

applications.

(f) Competence in programming in a mainstream compiled strongly typed programming

language.

(g) Experience of test automation where tests are programmed using a programming or

scripting language rather than being recorded and replayed. Tool use to cover:

a. Commercial thick client test automation tools such as QTP.

b. Functional web-client test automation tools such as Selenium.

c. A load test tools such as the Grinder or LoadRunner.

(h) Good understanding of how multi-user / multi-tier software operates.

(i) Extensive experience of systematic software test case selection and specification.

(j) Understanding of test case selection theory addressing equivalence partitioning and

state model coverage.

(k) Experience of operating in a defect coordination / management role that was not purely

administrative but that required the taking an active role in pursuing and promoting the

appropriate resolution of defects.

(l) Experience of being responsible for taking defects form an anecdotal report or one-off

incident state and converting them into readily reproducible issues that can then be

addressed.