Position Information
Posted Range: $98,800-$143,000 annually
The base salary range represents a good faith salary range for this position. This position is eligible for annual incentive pay and has the opportunity for continued salary growth. If you are hired at American Water your base salary compensation will be determined based on factors such as market, geography, skills, education and/or experience. At American Water, we are committed to pay equity.
In addition to compensation, you will be offered a comprehensive benefits package including 401(k), Defined Contribution Plan, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, medical, prescription, dental and vision coverage, plus disability, paid time off, life insurance, voluntary benefits, health and wellness programs and much more!
American Water is also proud to offer employees learning opportunities and work experiences to grow professionally!
Primary Role
• Define and lead the implementation of standards, methods, and procedures for testing, and evaluating the efficiency and performance of our software applications and products
• Responsible for providing strategic leadership and oversight over all aspects of the QA projects and activities
• Direct the development of the QA strategy, methodology, discipline and framework
• Designs and delivers the overall testing automation strategy used by the teams by utilizing broad knowledge and awareness of automation testing approaches, practices and techniques for scalability, functionality, and reusability
• Responsible to design and develop the test automation framework, harnesses, and code libraries and enhance them to be used across multiple projects
• Participate in release planning, scheduling and deployment
• Participate in the review of technology designs for quality requirements and considerations
• Collaborate with other departments to ensure the quality of deliverables and to develop an end-to-end quality plan that supports performance goals
• Lead continuous improvement projects resulting from audits
• Perform retrospective analysis of products and deviations to identify trends
• Assist investigators with root cause analysis and documentation of immediate and long-term corrective actions • Gather and present testing metrics and testing activities for the projects to key stakeholders
• Provides leadership and direction for QA team which may include multiple functional areas and multiple applications
• Own testing strategy, tools and techniques
• Lead extended team of QA resources including the allocation of resources to product and project teams
Key Accountabilities
• Works with Team Leads and Business Leaders to design, develop, and facilitate test performance metrics for QA
• Develop action plans to improve test performance
• Works with Product Development teams to ensure they are delivering in line with quality entrance/exit criteria • Collaborate with technology teams to develop end to end Quality Plans that support performance goals
• Develops and maintains strategy for end user experience validation
• Monitor all the QA activities, test results, defects, root cause analysis and identifying areas of improvement. Implement steps required to improve the processes
• Be an advocate of Quality Assurance, continuous improvement and industry recognized Best Practices
• Define and evolve testing tools and techniques
Knowledge/Skills
• Have strong technical skills, both functional and non-functional, manual and automation, ideally in a continuous delivery environment
• Development and/or DevOps Experience
• Strong communication skills with all the key stakeholders to ensure QA vision is understood and implemented correctly
• Experience in running strictly defined quality assurance processes. Test plans definitions and execution, resource allocation against release plan and test schedule management
• Experience leading QA resources either employees or partners
• Solid understanding of test case management frameworks
• Experience in continuous testing within agile project management setup
• You have a bias towards automation with experience in test case automation
• A solid understanding of agile development methodologies
Experience/Education
• 10+ years’ overall experience with Information Technology / Information Systems
• 5+ years’ experience in application development, testing and successful delivery of technology initiatives
• 3+ years’ experience in a leadership/management role
• Proven track record of successful team leadership and development
• Hands on experience in establishing and running Testing Center of Excellence
• Strong experience with functional (Unit testing, Integration testing, System testing, Acceptance testing etc.) and non-functional testing (Performance testing, Security testing, Usability testing, Compatibility testing etc.) and test automation
• Deep understanding of the software test cycle process
• Passion for excellence in QA, advancing QA capabilities, automation, continuous integration, continuous testing and continuous delivery
• Highly effective team leadership, organizational, interpersonal, and communication skills
• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent in Computer Science or relevant field of engineering
Travel Requirements
As necessary, up to 15%
Work Environment
Standard office environment