Job summary
Do you have significant experience in providing quality assurance, developing and maintaining test automation techniques and manual tests? If so, the NHS Business Services Authority may have the role for you! We develop and support a range of IT and data services, and we're looking for an Automation Test Analyst to ensure the quality and reliability of our services by designing, developing, and executing manual and automated tests across new and existing systems. Your experience and knowledge will help drive our "Automate Smartly" approach, ensuring automation remains at the core of our testing strategy. Depending on your expertise, you may focus on one or more of the following:
o Functional Integration Testing - you will implement our test frameworks foracceptance, API, compatibility, and accessibility testing.
o Performance Testing - you will apply our performance test framework to assess system reliability and responsiveness.
o Data Processing Testing - you will help implement our new data processing test framework across our data platforms. We offer:
o 27 days leave (increasing with length of service) plus 8 bank holidays
o Flexible working (eg compressed hours)
o Flexi time
o Hybrid working
o Career development
o Wellbeing and inclusion network so Excellent pension
o NHS Car lease scheme
o Access to a wide range of benefits and high street discounts!
Please note that we may close the advert due to high volume of applications.
Main duties of the job
1. Evaluate, analyse, and interpret data and requirements to inform the design and development of scalable automation testing frameworks.
2. Apply specialist knowledge to define and create automated functional and regression tests using well structured-maintainable code.
3. Design, develop and deliver project test plans and test specification based on a variety of documents that outline both functional and non-functional requirements.
4. Assurance of test cycles for externally delivered projects, validating and approving documentation, and outputs of testing, escalating issues and risks appropriately.
5. Provide specialist QA and Automation Test advice and guidance, provide defect triage sessions with users, and 3rd parties to resolve issues that affect bespoke services, third-party applications and configurable off the shelf products (CoTS) and services, to support resolution and delivery.
6. Proactively engage in conversations to support the on-going development and maintenance of your own skills and knowledge, including attending relevant Communities of Practice.
7. Communicate complex information effectively across a wide range of people and levels of understanding, including both technical and non-technical audiences, to influence, negotiate and secure value-based outcomes and sign-off ahead of delivery of services.
8. Horizon scan to keep abreast of new and emerging technologies and standards to support innovative and creative delivery of QA and Test.
About us
Here at the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), what we do matters.
We manage the NHS Pension scheme, process prescription payments and much more. Our services are used by NHS organisations, contractors and the public: we're proud to be part of something meaningful, that touches millions of lives.
We design our services around customer needs and place people at the heart of our organisation. That's why when you join us, you'll be empowered and supported to help your career grow.
As one of the UK's Best Big Companies to work for, we're connected to our values: Collaborative, Adventurous, Reliable and Energetic. We care about our people, our purpose, and your progress.
We strive to offer a fantastic colleague experience, where every colleague is heard, supported and respected. Wellbeing, diversity and inclusion is at the centre of this, and you can join our Lived Experience Networks who help us bring our authentic selves to work.
We're committed to being a flexible employer and we try to offer a working pattern that suits you where possible, through hybrid working, flexible hours and more.
Alongside a competitive salary with pay progression, we offer a people-centric benefits package, connecting you to the rewards and benefits you value most!
Ready to join us in delivering business service excellence to the NHS, helping people live longer, healthier lives? Apply today and see where the NHSBSA can take you.
We are people connected to care.
Job description
Job responsibilities
In this role, you are accountable for:
Specialist skills
1. Evaluating, analysing, and interpreting information and requirements to inform the design and development of scalable automation testing frameworks.
2. Applying specialist knowledge, to define and create automated functional and regression tests using well structured-maintainable code.
3. Designing, developing and delivering project test plans and test specification based on a variety of documents that outline both functional and non-functional requirements.
4. Assurance of testing cycles for externally delivered projects, validating and approving documentation, and outputs of testing, escalating issues and risks appropriately.
5. Provide specialist QA and Automation Test advice and guidance, provide defect triage sessions with selected users, and third parties to resolve issues that affect bespoke services, third-party applications and configurable of the shelf products (CoTS) and services, to support swift resolution and delivery.
6. Proactively engaging in conversations to support the on-going development and maintenance of your own skills and knowledge, including attending relevant Communities of Practice.
7. Communicating complex information effectively across a wide range of people and levels of understanding, including both technical and non-technical audiences, to influence, negotiate and secure value based outcomes and sign of ahead of delivery of services.
8. Regularly horizon scans to keep abreast of new and emerging technologies and standards to support innovative and creative delivery of QA and Test.
Staff
9. Support relevant recruitment and selection in line with organisational processes.
10. Mentor and coach other team members, and apprentices to enable the on-going personal development and growth of skills within the team.
11. Co-ordinate and allocate work to other team members in line with agreed delivery of services
Financial Management
12. Maintain an awareness of financial and personal implications in the use of a range of resources.
13. Contribute to and prepare proposals for estimating new and existing pieces of work.
Relationship Management
14. Identifying opportunities and engaging in partnership working with other individuals, groups and agencies within the NHS, DoH and other third parties.
15. Effectively engage and collaborate across multiple disciplines to ensure consistent approaches, methods, standards, and patterns are holistically applied
Information Management
16. Contributing to, monitoring, maintaining and reporting on agreed testing metrics, reviewing own performance and adapt own approach to maximise the success and to meet agreed standards.
Delivery Management
17. Preparing plans to enable the delivery of QA and Test activities for projects and programmes undertaken.
18. Proactively identify challenges that may affect delivery, providing mitigating actions and a decisive response.
19. Creating and delivering tests to ensure the overall needs of the business are met.
In addition to the above accountabilities, as post holder you are expected to:
1. Undertake additional duties and responsibilities in line with the purpose of your role and as agreed by your line manager.
2. Demonstrate NHSBSA values and core capabilities in all aspects of your work.
3. Encourage an environment where your own and colleagues safety and well-being is promoted.
4. Contribute to a culture which values diversity and inclusion.
5. Follow NHSBSA policies, procedures, and protocols as they apply to your role.
Working relationships
Responsible to: Assigned Team Manager
Key relationships and connections:1. Team members,
2. Service delivery teams,
3. Business stakeholders
4. Service Managers
5. Suppliers
6. Peer Networks
Job description
Job responsibilities
In this role, you are accountable for:
Specialist skills
1. Evaluating, analysing, and interpreting information and requirements to inform the design and development of scalable automation testing frameworks.
2. Applying specialist knowledge, to define and create automated functional and regression tests using well structured-maintainable code.
3. Designing, developing and delivering project test plans and test specification based on a variety of documents that outline both functional and non-functional requirements.
4. Assurance of testing cycles for externally delivered projects, validating and approving documentation, and outputs of testing, escalating issues and risks appropriately.
5. Provide specialist QA and Automation Test advice and guidance, provide defect triage sessions with selected users, and third parties to resolve issues that affect bespoke services, third-party applications and configurable of the shelf products (CoTS) and services, to support swift resolution and delivery.
6. Proactively engaging in conversations to support the on-going development and maintenance of your own skills and knowledge, including attending relevant Communities of Practice.
7. Communicating complex information effectively across a wide range of people and levels of understanding, including both technical and non-technical audiences, to influence, negotiate and secure value based outcomes and sign of ahead of delivery of services.
8. Regularly horizon scans to keep abreast of new and emerging technologies and standards to support innovative and creative delivery of QA and Test.
Staff
9. Support relevant recruitment and selection in line with organisational processes.
10. Mentor and coach other team members, and apprentices to enable the on-going personal development and growth of skills within the team.
11. Co-ordinate and allocate work to other team members in line with agreed delivery of services
Financial Management
12. Maintain an awareness of financial and personal implications in the use of a range of resources.
13. Contribute to and prepare proposals for estimating new and existing pieces of work.
Relationship Management
14. Identifying opportunities and engaging in partnership working with other individuals, groups and agencies within the NHS, DoH and other third parties.
15. Effectively engage and collaborate across multiple disciplines to ensure consistent approaches, methods, standards, and patterns are holistically applied
Information Management
16. Contributing to, monitoring, maintaining and reporting on agreed testing metrics, reviewing own performance and adapt own approach to maximise the success and to meet agreed standards.
Delivery Management
17. Preparing plans to enable the delivery of QA and Test activities for projects and programmes undertaken.
18. Proactively identify challenges that may affect delivery, providing mitigating actions and a decisive response.
19. Creating and delivering tests to ensure the overall needs of the business are met.
In addition to the above accountabilities, as post holder you are expected to:
1. Undertake additional duties and responsibilities in line with the purpose of your role and as agreed by your line manager.
2. Demonstrate NHSBSA values and core capabilities in all aspects of your work.
3. Encourage an environment where your own and colleagues safety and well-being is promoted.
4. Contribute to a culture which values diversity and inclusion.
5. Follow NHSBSA policies, procedures, and protocols as they apply to your role.
Working relationships
Responsible to: Assigned Team Manager
Key relationships and connections:1. Team members,
2. Service delivery teams,
3. Business stakeholders
4. Service Managers
5. Suppliers
6. Peer Networks
Person Specification
Personal Qualities, Knowledge and Skills
Essential
- Working collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary team setting, both internal and externally.
- Design, development and execution of manual and automated test approaches and frameworks.
- Management of own work and others work to meet deliverables.
- Working within Agile scrum teams; creating and estimating tasks.
- Pro-active approach to self-learning and continuous professional development.
- Specialist knowledge consistent with attainment of degree level qualifications.
- Business change and rationalisation of systems processes and services.
- Analysis of requirements, design and development of applications to meet business needs.
- Analysis, investigation and resolution of complex
- ICT issues, within new and existing services to enable business continuity and resolve major incidents.
- Use of version control systems such as Github/Gitlab, SVN
- Frameworks and approaches to automation within a Continuous Deployment environment.
- Translating requirements into user stories to create deliverable features.
Desirable
- Awareness of digital channel shift and approaches
- Knowledge of design principles (Object oriented design; common design patterns; responsive web design; security by design; government service design)
- Working knowledge of cloud, Windows and Unix environments
Experience
Essential
- Software development lifecycle, including where, why and when quality assurance and testing processes fit into the lifecycle of an application or service.
- One or more of the following frameworks: Agile, Java, Ruby, Selenium, HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript, SQL and/or BDD TDD
- Communicating complex technical information easily to both technical and non-technical people.
- Mentoring, coaching and sharing best practice with a range of staff.
- Proactive approach to learning and keep abreast of latest technologies to keep skills up to date and adaptable to change.
- Writing and maintaining testing documentation.
- Presenting work to peers, communities and user groups
- Selenium Webdriver or Watir frameworks
- Test tools and principles in: Cross Browser testing, Accessibility testing
Desirable
- Identifying, assessing and managing risk.
- GDS type design principles in action - "coding in the open"
- GDS Digital Standards.
- Use of Browser Stack or Selenium Grid.
- Accessibility Tools (Wave, Tenon & axe)
- Performance Test Tools (JMeter / Gatling)
- Security testing methods (Pen Tests, XSS, SQL injection)
- SQL and its use in one or more DBMS (Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server).
- Spring
- Jasper
Qualifications
Essential
- Degree calibre with relevant in-depth knowledge of the subject matter, OR
- Relevant experience of the subject matter
Desirable
- Qualifications in appropriate IT certification (eg ITIL, TOGAF, Agile, ISTQB etc)
Person Specification
Personal Qualities, Knowledge and Skills
Essential
- Working collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary team setting, both internal and externally.
- Design, development and execution of manual and automated test approaches and frameworks.
- Management of own work and others work to meet deliverables.
- Working within Agile scrum teams; creating and estimating tasks.
- Pro-active approach to self-learning and continuous professional development.
- Specialist knowledge consistent with attainment of degree level qualifications.
- Business change and rationalisation of systems processes and services.
- Analysis of requirements, design and development of applications to meet business needs.
- Analysis, investigation and resolution of complex
- ICT issues, within new and existing services to enable business continuity and resolve major incidents.
- Use of version control systems such as Github/Gitlab, SVN
- Frameworks and approaches to automation within a Continuous Deployment environment.
- Translating requirements into user stories to create deliverable features.
Desirable
- Awareness of digital channel shift and approaches
- Knowledge of design principles (Object oriented design; common design patterns; responsive web design; security by design; government service design)
- Working knowledge of cloud, Windows and Unix environments
Experience
Essential
- Software development lifecycle, including where, why and when quality assurance and testing processes fit into the lifecycle of an application or service.
- One or more of the following frameworks: Agile, Java, Ruby, Selenium, HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript, SQL and/or BDD TDD
- Communicating complex technical information easily to both technical and non-technical people.
- Mentoring, coaching and sharing best practice with a range of staff.
- Proactive approach to learning and keep abreast of latest technologies to keep skills up to date and adaptable to change.
- Writing and maintaining testing documentation.
- Presenting work to peers, communities and user groups
- Selenium Webdriver or Watir frameworks
- Test tools and principles in: Cross Browser testing, Accessibility testing
Desirable
- Identifying, assessing and managing risk.
- GDS type design principles in action - "coding in the open"
- GDS Digital Standards.
- Use of Browser Stack or Selenium Grid.
- Accessibility Tools (Wave, Tenon & axe)
- Performance Test Tools (JMeter / Gatling)
- Security testing methods (Pen Tests, XSS, SQL injection)
- SQL and its use in one or more DBMS (Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server).
- Spring
- Jasper
Qualifications
Essential
- Degree calibre with relevant in-depth knowledge of the subject matter, OR
- Relevant experience of the subject matter
Desirable
- Qualifications in appropriate IT certification (eg ITIL, TOGAF, Agile, ISTQB etc)
Additional information
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
