Software Developer, Test II
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 ninth consecutive year, we’re looking for innovators who can bring their expertise and passion to our growing team.
Do you enjoy analytics, visualizations, and databases? Do you challenge software beyond its acceptance criteria to discover deep system problems? Combine these two passions!
We’re looking for an enthusiastic, customer-focused, and technology minded individual to test our data, imitate our users and challenge our applications by exposing the ways they fail. If that sounds like you, then we’d be excited to have you join our Data team as a Software Developer, Test II.
The successful individual can imagine, brainstorm, execute, and review testing plans, focusing on ensuring our data analytics are correct and establishing/enhancing automated testing, based on our feature and product roadmaps, and the impacts of the ever-changing world of technology, such as new browsers and devices, cloud platforms, application development platforms, security risks, environment configurations, and more.
As a quality advocate, you test changes and improvements to our Data Warehouse and reports as they are deployed to various environments, and you are challenged to imagine ways that both related and seemingly unrelated requirements, features, or products might interact with each other to expose real-world problems faced by our users. You demonstrate knowledge and experience in the technologies, products, and services that you have worked with, and you share this knowledge with your team members. Your code is clean, clear, consistent, and reusable, and you consistently make improvements – big or small – to the impacted code.
Why choose OCAS?
- We offer a hybrid work environment that gives you the flexibility to work in our Guelph office, remotely, or a combination of both.
- Your team is an amazing group of individuals who are passionate about technology and are encouraged to explore new ways of working.
- You'll start off with 22 vacation days, as well as paid company breaks in the summer and during the holiday season.
- We offer a corporate pension plan to help you prepare for your next stage of life.
- We also offer generous benefits that include vision and dental care, extended health care, life insurance, and more.
- We understand the importance of lifelong learning, with a generous professional development allowance, as well as other initiatives to help you 'skill up'.
- We support several local charities and offer paid time-off to volunteer in your community.
You share OCAS’ core Quality values:
- Quality is an organizational mindset, not an individual one.
- We can test anything: 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:
- Work closely with team members, including testers, developers, product managers, client service representatives, and others, to build and execute exploratory test plans that rigorously test the data and the reports that surface them
- Identify opportunities for efficiencies through automation of our operational reports
- Experience with the analysis (data display, UI, AODA, etc.) and evaluation of data reports using visualization software
- Create, enhance and update an automated test framework including designing and writing SQL query-based tests, monitoring results and investigating failed tests
- Make improvements to test projects for ease of maintainability and understandability
- Raise awareness about issues discovered during testing and work collaboratively with members of other departments to develop solutions
- Use the most appropriate tool or skill you have to solve a given testing problem, or learn a new one
- Investigate customer issues through the incident management process, and clearly communicate your knowledge of the issue(s) at hand
- Be an active participant in project planning exercises (such as Design Review, Sprint 0 break down and Triage)
- Understand Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery processes and how software is promoted through the various internal environments before being released to the customers and partners
- 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
- A resume no longer than two pages that clearly describes the interesting and unique ways you've improved software, product, user experience, and/or process quality in the past
- 3+ years experience in the software testing field, over which time you have demonstrated continuous learning and personal growth in this profession
- Strong skills in relational databases (Oracle and SQL Server) and with using SSMS and SQL to validate databases, data and ETL processes in a Data Warehouse
- Experience with various aspects of a data warehouse system such as database objects, data flow, performance, resource usage, logging and failure scenarios
- A curious mind that asks lots of questions and enjoys researching multiple perspectives before determining the best solution
- The ability to take divergent concepts, thoughts, and findings, and converge them into a clear, complete, and concise written or oral message
- A love of working with different teams to achieve the common goal of building an amazing product that exceeds expectations
Other desirable experience:
- 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
- Familiarity with various components of web applications such as integrations, performance, security, and reliability
- Test scripting experience in Selenium WebDriver, Protractor, Appium, or other similar frameworks
- Familiarity with Microsoft Azure DevOps / VSTS / VSO / TFS, JIRA, or another similar SDLC tool
Salary: $75,000 - $93,000
Position Reports to: Team Lead, Quality
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.
