Senior Software Developer, Test

Technology is reinventing higher education and at OCAS we play a vital role in helping shape this evolving landscape. We deliver dependable technology systems and business services to support our industry partners and create new pathways for learners exploring and applying to Ontario's public colleges.

Recently named a Waterloo Area Top Employer for the tenth consecutive year, we're looking for innovators who can bring their expertise and passion to our growing team.

This position is offered as a 6-month contract. Depending on organizational needs and project developments, there is potential for the contract to be extended.

Experienced in software quality and development and want to use all the tools at your disposal to test and analyze software applications to improve product experience? We're looking for a skilled Senior Software Developer, Test, who's eager to find application, performance, and system bugs by creating and maintaining automated test frameworks and scripting test scenarios.

As a Senior Software Developer, Test, at OCAS you'll play an important role in developing and supporting the technology that helps hundreds of thousands of individuals every year as they take the first step toward a brighter future through college. An integral member of our Quality and Agile development teams, you'll be instrumental in accelerating and improving the quality and delivery of OCAS products and services by researching, proposing, and piloting new ways to improve our product quality.

Being an advocate for Quality, you'll test features deployed to the cross-functional test environment shared by all our products and will be challenged to imagine ways that both related and seemingly unrelated features or products might interact with each other to expose real-world problems faced by our users.

A self-starter, you'll also influence the direction of our team and our products. With a focus on the design, development, and implementation of test code, you'll contribute and maintain our automated test suites to support continuous deployment for our products and environments. In addition to automated testing, you'll also perform exploratory testing to identify issues that may not be captured by automated frameworks, ensuring a comprehensive approach to product quality.

You'll also work with development teams to ensure quality throughout the development process by reviewing coding practices, participating in code reviews, and reviewing requirements from a Quality perspective. As a member of the OCAS team, you'll work with remarkable individuals and colleagues who support each other in achieving high performance.

You share OCAS' core Quality values:

• Quality is an organizational mindset, not an individual one.
• We can test anything, whether or not we have requirements for it: a prototype, a design, a flowchart, an idea, or even actual software.
• All software systems inherently have bugs and problems to discover.
• Passing test scenarios are encouraging; however, they don't tell the entire story.
• Automated check systems are only a piece of a successful test plan.

In this role, you will:

• Lead efforts to improve test maintainability, reusability, and code quality
• Have a strong ability to investigate issues by using a variety of tooling appropriate for the given technologies being investigated
• Identify issues in code review before they have been merged into the mainline branch
• Demonstrate a strong knowledge of the technologies you have worked with, and use this knowledge to inform their approach to test automation, and testing in general
• Show advanced knowledge of SQL and possibly other query syntax languages to help facilitate issue investigation and test setup
• Have advanced knowledge of application architecture and infrastructure, and how to investigate, interpret, analyze, and summarize the results of performance testing at scale
• Demonstrate a strong command of version control with an ability to effectively manage large changesets
• Create, improve, and maintain build/test/release pipelines for a variety of different products or services across multiple environments with a solid understanding of how test automation is deployed, hosted, and executed on remote agents, containers, etc.
• Comfortably and respectfully raise risks to the project team or through escalation paths as required
• Be able to provide an unbiased assessment of the deliverables of a proposed project/feature/fix
• Regularly keep upstream and downstream teams informed of projects that would impact them, enhancing cross-team collaboration
• Take a leading role in improving the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery processes, including where and how test automation can be leveraged to provide timely and helpful feedback
• Stay current with prevailing industry trends in software and testing (e.g., new browser features, new OS platforms, cloud service offerings, accessibility regulations, security risks or incidents)

You should have:

• A technical college or university credential in Computer Science, Information Technology, or another similar discipline
• 5+ years formal experience, continuous learning, and / or personal growth in the software development (including test development) field
• A resume that clearly describes the interesting and unique ways you've improved product or process quality, or supported customers and improved customer experience (not necessarily software products, processes, or experiences) in the past
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with an ability to communicate observed software behavior and its impact to the current project's success, as well as to persuade and influence team members when identifying new ways of implementing features and ways of working
• Understanding of various testing strategies and methodologies
• Ability to work independently and possess initiative to meet multiple deadlines with minimal supervision
• Attention to detail and ability to provide accurate, sound, and viable recommendations to decision makers
• Ability to modify methods, techniques and procedures to customize your approach for the intended audience
• Test scripting experience in Selenium WebDriver, Protractor, Appium, Playwright, or other similar frameworks
• Familiarity with Microsoft Azure DevOps / VSTS / VSO / TFS, JIRA, or another similar SDLC tool

Other desirable experience:

• Familiarity with various components of web applications such as integrations, performance, security, and reliability
• Experience with the analysis and evaluation of data reports
• Understanding of data visualization software such as Power BI or Tableau
• Various testing strategies and methodologies, especially session-based exploratory testing
• Knowledge of AODA and WCAG guidelines
• Experience creating mind maps or using other brainstorming tools and methods
• Software delivery and test methodologies including Scrum
• Any of C#, Java, or JavaScript

Salary per hour: $ $52.00

Position Reports to: Manager, Technology Solutions

OCAS is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome and encourage applications from diverse candidates, including people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. While we thank all respondents for their interest, only those candidates being invited to interview for this position will be contacted.