QA Engineer

As a QA Engineer, you will be a vital player in upholding the standard of quality within your team, working collaboratively with fellow engineers and designers. Positioned within the heart of the QA Engineering community, you contribute actively to the collective knowledge and best practices of this group. Throughout the software engineering process, you're engaged from the initial phases, ensuring that the product or service not only meets but exceeds user expectations. With guidance from the Principal QA Engineer, you'll learn and immerse yourself in the entire software journey, from absorbing user needs and requirements to confirming the validation of these needs through comprehensive testing. By immersing yourself in this role, you'll contribute significantly to the resilience, efficiency, and security of digital systems. You'll cherish the collaborative spirit, working transparently within a diverse team and forging strong connections with Engineering, Product, Design, and Operations experts from across the globe, together shaping the digital future of the organisation. Role Context The Digital and Technology Directorate leads the British Council's digital strategy and transformation. It creates and executes technology initiatives to fulfil the organisation's mission and corporate priorities. Key focus areas are:

• Creating digital products that attract and retain customers, delivering business value through digital design and delivery expertise.
• Developing and optimising digital platforms that provide seamless customer interactions and use scalable and secure capabilities.
• Enhancing digital capability across the organisation.
• Enabling growth, impact and efficiency through technology.
Digital and Technology is a global Directorate organised into four divisions: Product, Engineering, Operations and Performance. This role is a senior role in the Engineering unit. The Engineering team brings together capabilities which include Architecture, Software Engineering, QA and Delivery expertise to ensure excellence in the development of our global products and services. Encompassing Reuse, Buy and Build strategies, it champions community of practices, define solutions and core-capabilities and create amazing products. Accountabilities/Responsibilities:
• Collaborate with team members to understand and maintain quality standards for projects.
• Work closely with the QA community to share knowledge and implement best practices.
• Support the implementation and adherence to quality standards and coding best practices.
• Work with product leads and other stakeholders to ensure quality in engineering stories.
• Assist in applying standards and methods to ensure compliance across all stages of a software development project.
• Contribute to both automated and manual testing within the team, ensuring products and services meet expected quality benchmarks.
• Assist in identifying potential system risks and work with the team to put in place appropriate security measures.
• Work with senior team members to ensure solutions are compliant with industry standards, regulations, and data privacy requirements.
• Contribute to maintaining monitoring and logging tools to promptly detect and respond to potential security or compliance issues.
• Collaborate with the team to understand product requirements and user needs.
• Assist in reporting on quality metrics and test results to inform the team and stakeholders.
• Support the identification of opportunities for optimising costs and improving efficiency in systems, keeping in mind the balance between business requirements and quality standards.
  
  You must have the legal right to work in the UK at the time of application. There is no relocation or sponsorship support.
British Council supports working in new ways such as hybrid working, subject to full approval by line management and conditional upon our ability to provide the appropriate level of service. This may not be appropriate for all roles but can be explored at interview.,
• 2+ years of experience in Quality Assurance, focusing on both manual and automated testing in agile environments.
• Proficiency in automation tools like Selenium or Appium and familiarity with scripting in Java, Python, or JavaScript.
• Understanding of standard testing methodologies (e.g., Black-box, Regression testing).
• Experience with testing frameworks or BDD tools such as Cucumber.
• Basic knowledge of RESTful APIs and testing API endpoints.
• Awareness of relational and NoSQL databases and basic query writing.
• Experience or familiarity with CI/CD tools for test integration and automation.
• Awareness of cross-browser testing and mobile application testing tools.
• Understanding of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and the role of QA.
• Experience with defect tracking tools like JIRA and test management tools.
• Basic knowledge of web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) for debugging.
• Experience or exposure to performance testing tools to ensure system stability.
• Good written and oral communication skills to document tests and report defects.
• Written and verbal proficiency (CEF 1) in English is required.
  
  We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide.
We work directly with individuals to help them gain the skills, confidence and connections to transform their lives and shape a better world in partnership with the UK. We support them to build networks and explore creative ideas, to learn English, to get a high-quality education and to gain internationally recognised qualifications. Working with people in over 200 countries and territories, we are on the ground in more than 100 countries. In 2021-22 we reached 650 million people., The British Council is committed to safeguarding children, young people and adults who we work with. We believe that all children and adults everywhere in the world deserve to live in safe environments and have the right to be protected from all forms of abuse, maltreatment and exploitation as set out in article 19, UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) 1989. Appointment to positions where there is direct involvement with vulnerable groups will be dependent on thorough checks being completed; these will include qualification checks, reference checks, identity & criminal record checks in line with legal requirements and with the British Council's Safeguarding policies for Adults and Children.