Quality Assurance Test Analyst - ONS - HEO

Location

The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport, Titchfield (Fareham) and Manchester.

All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time.

The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

About the job

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics.  These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

Are you passionate about precision and problem-solving? As a Quality Assurance Test Analyst, you will be at the heart of ensuring our systems perform flawlessly. You will define and design test conditions, execute tests independently, and turn results into actionable insights. With a keen eye for detail, you’ll identify and manage defects, helping to deliver reliable, high-quality outcomes that make a real difference.

We are looking for four Quality Assurance Test Analysts to join us with our Digital Service Directorate. 

Job description

The Quality Assurance Test (QAT) team will define test conditions, design test cases, and create test scripts which comprehensively test the functionality of a system to ensure the system/service meets the required quality standards. 

The team will use their Analytical skills, domain, and business knowledge to identify defects within a System and manage defects throughout a project to ensure quality metrics are available which can inform stakeholders in their Go/No-Go decisions. 

The QAT Team designs and executes test cases, as part of a broader risk-based test plan to ensure that systems, services, and end-to-end processes are integrated and operationally ready. 

You will be working with development teams, third parties, operations teams, and business areas to plan, co-ordinate and manage/facilitate testing (included inter dependencies) they ensure that the agreed test strategy is correctly implemented by means of the following activities. Undertakes analysis, definition, and design of test conditions and test cases. Executes tests independently and can derive meaningful outcomes and identify and manage defects.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with delivery teams and determine the testability of functional and non-functional requirements .
Have domain and business knowledge and apply this to test execution, taking a technical and business/operational view when analysing the system under test.
Gather all required specification and information to thoroughly design Test Cases that will effectively measure quality. 
Take a business and operational view when analysing the system under test.
Deliver at pace using the most appropriate delivery methodologies and adopting agile principles.  
Assist decision makers in gathering information to make informed decisions. 
Actively participate in the Testing community and broader communities to refine and develop standards, working practices, sharing of knowledge, and understanding.    
Where appropriate and in line with divisional organisation practice, Line management of QAT Analysts within the ONS community. 

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

Communicating between the technical and non-technical (Working) -  Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, support and host discussions within a multidisciplinary team, with potentially difficult dynamics, be an advocate for the team externally and manage differing stakeholder perspectives.
Designing and executing tests (Working) - Select appropriate test types and techniques with some support, design, build, maintain and execute tests that align to user needs and requirements, conduct exploratory testing when such an approach is required and research and try new test types and techniques
Managing, reporting and resolving defects (Working) - Collaborate with others to create a defect management process to report, communicate and resolve defects, with support, critically assess dependencies, defects and risks, with support, contribute to mitigation and contingency plans and clearly communicate risks and the impact of defects to stakeholders 
Test analysis (Working) -  Work with stakeholders to determine which functional and non-functional quality characteristics add value, determine what to test following an agreed approach, identify and advocate for test needs, such as data, access and environments, with support. analyse information to identify risks.
Test and quality planning (Working) - Create or adapt quality testing approaches based on risk, with some support, follow a quality testing strategy and contribute to its development and contribute to continuous improvement of quality testing approaches, plans and strategies. 

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Communicating and Influencing
Working Together
Managing a Quality Service
Delivering at Pace

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

Understanding of Test Management Tools (JIRA, QC, TFS, Azure DevOps, any other)
Knowledge of the Software Delivery Life Cycle (SDLC)
An understanding of common functional test techniques and the ability to apply them accordingly