QA Engineer

About this task

Role Overview

- Independent contractor (1099) engagement providing quality assurance consulting for a federal health care platform.
- Collaborate with cross-functional Agile teams to ensure websites and underlying software function correctly, efficiently, and securely.
- Identify defects, verify feature implementations, and maintain quality standards throughout the software development lifecycle, working closely with developers, designers, and product managers.
- Candidates must obtain and maintain federal Public Trust clearance and meet all CMS residency requirements.

Responsibilities

- Review project requirements, user stories, and design mockups to understand the scope of testing.
- Create detailed test plans covering functional, performance, accessibility, usability, and security testing.
- Develop and maintain clear test documentation for the team.
- Perform manual and automated testing to validate website functionality, including responsive design across devices and browsers.
- Execute regression tests to ensure recent code changes have not introduced new issues, and conduct exploratory testing to uncover unexpected defects.
- Identify and implement Section 508 accessibility standards in testing.
- Log and track defects in Jira with detailed, reproducible reports, screenshots, and clear reproduction steps.
- Collaborate with developers to troubleshoot issues, conduct root cause analysis, and validate fixes.
- Collaborate with security teams to conduct basic security tests and identify vulnerabilities.
- Participate in Agile ceremonies and risk management assessments, and recommend testing-process improvements.

Requirements

- Strong knowledge of QA methodologies, tools, and processes.
- Ability to identify and write explicit test scenarios, test plans, and test cases from requirements documents.
- Experience identifying and implementing Section 508 accessibility standards.
- Experience with JavaScript-based testing using Cypress.
- Experience logging and tracking defects using Jira.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Self-motivated and able to work with little or no supervision.
- Comfortable working within a highly collaborative, cross-functional team.
- Ability to obtain and maintain Public Trust clearance and satisfy CMS residency requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

- Ability to develop and maintain automated tests in Cypress or PHPUnit.
- Experience performing load and stress testing to identify performance bottlenecks using tools such as JMeter or LoadRunner.

Compensation and Engagement

- Contract rates are determined based on experience, qualifications, project requirements, and market considerations. No numerical rate is specified.
- This independent contractor engagement is not eligible for employee compensation programs or benefits.
- Contractor engagements are available to residents of all 50 United States, subject to project-specific requirements.

Independent Contractor Documentation

- Completed Form W-9.
- Proof of General Liability Insurance.
- Certificate of Insurance (COI).
- Compliance with project-specific customer requirements, including applicable background checks or security clearances.
- Additional documentation may be required depending on the engagement.