QA Engineer
About Ellevation
At Ellevation, we develop world-class software to help school districts and educators support the fastest growing population of K-12 students: English Learners (ELs). By combining great products, student data, and research on best practices, Ellevation helps school districts transform their EL programs and ensure all students can achieve their highest aspirations. We are a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company, partnering with nearly 700 public school districts all across the country. We are well-capitalized, have a strong and growing team, and are continuously focused on how to build the best organization so that we can achieve our ambitious social and financial objectives.
Our Engineering Culture
At Ellevation, we are organized into small, cross-functional teams that are motivated to meet or exceed high-level objectives in service of our customers. We focus on outcomes over output and our teams are empowered to research, prototype, and develop “MVPs” to solicit user feedback and validate hypotheses. We measure and rapidly iterate so that the end result is a high-confidence, high-value product. To avoid silos and over-specialization, team members work together closely for 9-12 months so that they develop deep expertise, productive working relationships, and have the runway to experiment and learn from failure while tackling tricky challenges.
Thought diversity is a core principle for Ellevation Engineering. Our engineers feel comfortable and confident to respectfully voice their ideas and opinions, even if we disagree, because this is how we learn and arrive at the best ideas that lead us to optimal results. We value best-practice software engineering principles such as continuous integration, loose coupling, and SOA. As a small technology company, we seek individuals who are willing to be cross-functional, hands-on in multiple areas, and a technical thought leader for the organization.
You are expected to take on and own vital initiatives and duties for the company, spark and lead discussion, and help establish the company’s technical direction while providing timely and quality support and education across the organization. This is a tremendous opportunity to help build the engineering foundation of the company.
In Your Role as a QA Engineer:
● You are responsible for validating, enhancing, and supporting quality in all parts of the software development process, from inception through implementation.
● You’re committed to preventing bugs instead of finding bugs by being involved in the full software development lifecycle, collaborating closely with other engineers, UX, and Product Owners.
● As an integral member of our engineering group, you will be asked to create, contribute to, and own pieces of our software development platform and ecosystem. This includes a combination of manual testing, test automation, and documentation.
● You will provide thought leadership and guidance for the wider organization the areas of testability, product and service functionality, and software quality, enabling us to release with confidence.
● You will work closely with our Product and other Ellevation teams to gain understanding of the ELL domain, our products, and (most importantly) our customers. You will then apply that knowledge to our software design and development lifecycle by creating, maintaining, and extending test cases and test strategies to cover functional testing across all of our products and important services.
● You’re interested in building skills around test automation and contributing to our existing test automation solution.
In Your First Three Months, You Will Have:
● Completed Ellevation and Engineering new hire onboarding curriculums to gain product and domain knowledge; ● Rotated through different cross-functional agile teams, learning about different parts of our products and establishing important working relationships across all of Engineering;
● Contributed to several successful production releases through test case development, execution, and results analysis;
● Paired with other engineers to learn about new features or components, informing your test strategies and approach;
● Defined and executed test cases that empower the team to ship software that provides maximum value for our customers;
● Prototyped and tinkered with a new test strategy or methodology, and shared your findings with the wider team; ● Actively listened in customer usability feedback sessions that provide additional context for user empathy and constructive comments about your work.
A Little Bit About You:
● You’re naturally curious, smart, and friendly. You’re excited to try to “break things”. Establishing a collaborative rapport with your team is critically important in soliciting the best feedback and ideas, even when they might differ from yours.
● You are a customer advocate who enjoys collaborating with a team focused on solving challenges, both for the customer and business as a whole. You strive to gain understand of our K-12 educator base and the students they serve.
● You have at least 2-4 years’ of experience in a software testing, troubleshooting or equivalent role, helping to support web applications and services. For example, you’re familiar with any one of the following: a scripting language such as Python, SQL, or HTML/CSS.
● You believe strongly in building in quality from the beginning, collaborating with product owners and engineers, to provide the best possible outcome for our customers;
● You value failures and mistakes as opportunities to learn. You apply your pragmatism and good judgement in explaining tradeoffs and risks.
● You have a passion for software and product quality. You’re invested in upholding and improving the processes used by the organization to build great products.