Lead QA Engineer

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations. We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations.

In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track. The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.

We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply. We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work.

A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you don’t hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. Due to the nature of the project it is also required you hold a British Citizenship or Dual Citizenship.

As a QA Engineer, you will join a technical team and be responsible for the delivery of key test activities as assigned by the Lead. The successful candidate will work within a team to support agile development efforts, and business stakeholders, to design, create and execute tests. You’ll need to have the ability to effectively communicate with all members of the Agile delivery team.

You will:

• Review requirements and design documents to generate test cases including identifying test data and defining test environment needs
• Create and review testing strategies, plans and designs
• Create and review and optimising testing processes
• Prepare and execute test scenarios (BDD/TDD) to test the application, network and infrastructure solution at all levels including non-functional
• Produce Test Reports and be able to report on interim progress
• Document test results including evidence of any testing defects
• Report progress, including risks & issues
• Investigate issues and work with the team to identify root cause and resolution
• Analyse data and test evidence from testing outcome to show compliance to requirements

Core Competencies

You will have demonstrated the following competencies to the proficiency level appropriate to the seniority of the role:

• Extensive testing experience working in data centric environments - project experience must include data migration, data pipeline (ETL) and streaming
• Gathering testing requirements - developing Feature files and acceptance criteria with business stakeholders and turning them into scripts
• Extensive back-end testing experience - Linux
• An understanding of Kafka/Docker (from a QA perspective)
• Experience working with Jira, Maven
• Experience with BDD and TDD
• Automation testing using any of custom test suites - Fitnesse, Selenium and Soap UI
• Automated performance testing using Load Runner or similar (not mandatory)
• Experience in developing custom regression test suites using any of the programming languages Python, Perl, Shell scripting, Java, MySQL
• Experience of using Cucumber and creating test frameworks
• Experience of creating detailed test plan and test strategy.
• Liaising with the client test leads/managers and align the test strategy/plan created with the overall test plan/strategy and get the required sign offs of all the artefacts created
• Act as a single point of contact for any test related activities and communications related to the project
• Release Test planning/strategy for the changes to be released in prod
• Create Automation Test strategy evaluating the appropriate options from the available automation tools in the market with a view of creating e2e automation framework which could be integrated and scheduled with standard CI tools like Gitlab/Drone/Jenkins
• Experience in cloud based environments like AWS / Azure / GCP

Aker Systems Attributes

At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion.

In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more.

Equal Opportunities

Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.