Senior QA Automation Analyst

Full-time - Senior

Rensselaer, NY

About the position

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) manages the efficient flow of electricity on more than 11,000 circuit-miles of high-voltage transmission lines, dispatching power from hundreds of generating units across the state. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) applies cutting-edge technology to operating a reliable electricity system, managing competitive markets for wholesale electricity, and planning for the Empire State's energy future. The NYISO’s Information Technology department invites applications for a full-time Senior QA Automation Analyst to join our team. The Senior QA Automation Analyst is responsible for ensuring quality of production code deployments by finding software defects through robust automated test design and review, establishing confidence in the level of software quality, and providing information for decision-making regarding quality and readiness for software release. This includes reviewing requirements, design and test plan documents, developing and documenting test plans, test cases, and test scripts, maintaining and executing manual and automated system tests, troubleshooting automated test executions, analyzing test results, identifying and reporting defects, validating bug fixes, regression testing, performance testing and creating test summary reports. The Senior QA Automation Analyst position participates in all phases of the software development lifecycle for assigned projects, researches new tools, techniques, and best practices, mentors and trains other team members, leads projects, and acts as a subject matter expert for assigned products. The Senior QA Automation Analyst is responsible for architecting and leading the vision and implementation of the automated testing strategy for all product testing. This role will also maintain and extend the design and architecture of the test automation framework to improve and expand its value. The Senior QA Automation Analyst will research new technologies, mentor other automation engineers, collaborate with Project Managers and act as a subject matter expert for automated testing. The Senior QA Automation Analyst will participate in a 24x7x365 on-call support rotation for test environment and automation support.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Software Engineers to review and understand application changes.
• Collaborate with other Software Engineering and IT teams as needed and Project Managers to manage changes to supported applications.
• Partner with other IT teams to resolve configuration, deployment, or environmental issues.
• Work directly with Business Partners to review and refine QA test scenarios.
• Assist Business Partners with creation of User Acceptance testing scenarios.
• Lead the test analysis and design activities for high visibility projects.
• Review requirements and design documents.
• Identify test conditions.
• Design automated test cases.
• Identify necessary data and environment setup.
• Identify acceptance criteria.
• Create and document traceability between requirements and test cases.
• Lead the execution of tests.
• Develop automation test procedures.
• Create test data, prepare test scripts.
• Verify test environment setup.
• Verifying traceability between requirements and test cases.
• Log test results, compare actual and expected results, report discrepancies, and validate bug fixes.
• Research new technologies and automated test solutions for implementation.
• Design, implement and maintain test automation frameworks.
• Ensure that designs are consistent with applicable NYISO software development standards.
• Apply creative, in-depth technical and theoretical knowledge to solve complex architecture and design problems.
• Create automation test cases and tests for NYISO applications.
• Maintain, troubleshoot, and support existing scripts.
• Develop short-term and long-term automation strategies and roadmaps.
• Collaborate with the development organization to understand how development changes affect ongoing automation efforts.
• Mentor and train associates in QA and development.
• Collaborate with QA Analysts to plan and coordinate testing for all automated test processes.
• Participate in project status meetings, maintain and review task due dates.
• Present technology design and related issues to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Prepare and document testing architecture plans.
• Act as department liaison for meetings, work groups and committees.
• Provide task estimates and work breakdown structures.
• Collaborate with Project Managers to manage resource allocations for the automation engineers.
• Design and develop user interfaces for the execution and monitoring of automated tests.
• Incorporate industry and NYISO best practices for web application security into all design and development work.
• Ensure that source code management practices are followed according to NYISO standards.
• Take ownership of test automation code, perform code reviews and suggest changes.
• Collaborate with Supervisor to plan and implement technical upgrades to supported automation frameworks.
• Maintain and upgrade infrastructure for execution of automated tests.
• Create and maintain scripts and automation for environment-specific test data creation.
• Quickly respond to testing needs for Urgent and Emergency changes.
• Participate in 24x7x365 on call support rotation for QA environments.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree (BS) in Software Engineering, Computer Science or related technical field required.
• Seven years in software development for quality assurance automation or system testing automation.
• Three years utilizing automated test tools.
• Three years in a progressively more responsible leadership role desired.
• Energy/Utility industry experience preferred.

Nice-to-haves

• SANS Security Awareness training or equivalent desired.
• American Software Testing Qualifications Board (ASTQB) ISTQB Certification - Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) desired.

Benefits

• Competitive salaries.
• Comprehensive benefits package.
• Innovative reward programs.
• Flexibility to work both in the office and remotely.