Senior Quality Analyst

SN Digital (SND) is a technology division of Springer Nature. We are responsible for maintaining and delivering millions of articles used by researchers, scientists and students around the globe. With approximately 330 people across London, Berlin, Pune, New York, Madrid, Dordrecht and Heidelberg, we work in collaborative, multi-disciplinary delivery teams, developing digital products and services that answer user problems and support business goals.

YOUR ROLE

We are looking for people who are passionate about reducing risk wherever it lies in an organisation building software products.

QA != End of the line testing

QA != Gatekeeper of releases

QA != Automate all the things

The role of a QA is to question all aspects of the software development lifecycle and beyond. Risk lies not only in work moving across a team’s delivery board, it requires someone with awareness of this and the expertise and experience to surface risks before they become issues. Organisational structures do not constrain you; you are confident in following your instinct to ensure that risk has nowhere to hide.

From querying user flows across the Springer Nature software estate to monitoring systems in production to threat modelling across infrastructure and product portfolios, there are many areas to investigate and advise upon. Providing insight to senior leadership on vulnerabilities not yet on anyone‘s radar and coaching teams on their approach to cross‑functional requirements, the role is diverse and requires a proactive person to succeed in it.

Driving the organisation towards working in smaller batches, releasing more frequently, shortening feedback loops and learning from log analytics and customer feedback is in your DNA. Your interaction and collaboration with different roles and teams are more valued than finding bugs or writing test scripts and documenting test cases and charters.

You will also be a part of a global QA community working across London, Pune, Berlin & Lisbon. We invest in our employees, and we also expect you to take responsibility for your own personal growth and continuous improvement. We are looking for people who constantly look for things to learn and believe in sharing and helping others grow.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

• Be the tactical risk reducer: advise fellow team members of the full range of functional and cross‑functional risks apparent in quality product build and delivery, and help the team to implement best practices to minimise these risks.
• Embed the three core QA activities: Explain, demonstrate and help to embed within the team the three core QA activities of Exploratory testing, Shift‑left and Collaborative QA (AKA shared responsibilities).
• Analyse and question decisions and approaches: strong at understanding how things work under the hood. Help improve products through contributions to architectural discussions and technical implementations.
• Embed effective testing: support and further embed a culture of shared responsibility for testing, defining and documenting testing types, boundaries, construction and maintenance.
• Improve our efficiency regarding Continuous Integration: advocate for stability, repeatability, reliability and efficiency of fully automated delivery pipelines and provide input to guide the team on maintaining delivery mechanisms.
• Advocate process improvements: suggest ways that may work within the team context and help improve the processes; innovate to improve current working practices, products and technologies in favour of better quality.
• Bring a particular specialism to your team and the discipline: deep interest in areas such as Accessibility, Software Security, Product Management, Monitoring, User Experience, etc., and share that expertise.

Understand the standards within the industry and regulations around the globe that may impact the product(s) your team builds, ensuring that everyone is aware of and proactively works to meet these requirements.

Help the QA community grow: Be an active member of the QA team, organising events/sharing sessions and participating in community meetings.

WITHIN 3 MONTHS YOU WILL:

• Understand the practices and processes necessary for your team to function, and encourage those concerned to document and make them available within SND.
• Understand the software development lifecycle (SDLC) of your team and be aware of similarities between SDLCs used by other teams in your domain; start forming opinions on valuable changes to assist risk reduction.
• Have met and built rapport with other QA staff in your domain, providing suggestions and receiving insight from them.
• Have built rapport with those in the domain from other disciplines.
• Be familiar with most people in the QA Community and be contributing to discussions on Slack/Teams, email and Quality Street calls.

WITHIN 6 MONTHS YOU WILL:

• Ensure that the team you are in continues to document their necessary practices and processes, and that they understand the value in doing so; provide notification to the domain.
• Use the compiled documentation to target areas of improvement you see the team needing to embark on as part of risk reduction.
• Understand the wider domain and form opinions on how it handles cross‑functional attributes.
• Have a clear idea on how you can help your domain improve its approach to QA.
• Discuss with domain leaders on how to support further risk reduction.
• Drive discussions to encourage more communication between everyone in the QA Community, explain detailed configuration in pipelines and share learnings from other areas of SND.

WITHIN A YEAR YOU WILL:

• Be aware of the groups within SND that service the domain you are in, and have started to build rapport with these groups.
• Be a trusted advisor in your team regarding the QA discipline, providing advice on best practices and tailored approaches based on the team’s needs.
• Discuss with leaders in your domain about long‑term areas of improvement to further reduce risk, and assist them in bringing about positive change.
• Collaborate with other QAs in SND to maintain a healthy and communicative QA community.

ABOUT YOU – SKILLS, EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

Essential:

• Experience working in a team that uses iterative software development practices.
• Experience leading the QA strategy in a team of more than five people – defining, documenting, explaining and continuously reviewing the QA strategy with every other discipline.
• Knowledge of cloud‑based architecture, microservices and the testing infrastructure required to validate products built using them.
• Knowledge of cross‑functional requirements such as security, accessibility, performance, data protection, compliance, etc. and how to ensure they have a consistently low risk profile in the team.
• Ability to advise and influence a group of people on risk‑reduction approaches.
• Excellent active listening skills and confidence to question anyone.

Desirable:

• Ability to read and understand code to a level that enables meaningful conversations with developers.
• In‑depth understanding of exploratory testing and ability to coach teams in best‑practice approaches.
• Ability to efficiently use AI tooling to augment QA work throughout the team’s software development lifecycle.

At Springer Nature we value the diversity of our teams. We recognise the many benefits of a diverse workforce with equitable opportunities for everyone and strive for an inclusive workplace that empowers all colleagues to thrive. Our search for the best talent fully encompasses and embraces these values and principles.