Quality Assurance Engineer

Role overview

Octave is seeking a Senior Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer embedded within an Agile/SAFe delivery team supporting global Public Safety software, including the HxGN OnCall application suite. You will own quality outcomes for assigned features and components by integrating QA throughout the delivery lifecycle (“shift-left”).

Responsibilities

• Embed as a QA partner on an Agile / SAFe team, owning quality outcomes for features/components
• Collaborate early with Product Owners and Developers to refine user stories, acceptance criteria, and test scenarios
• Apply and promote shift-left quality practices, including TDD and BDD
• Design, execute, and maintain manual and automated tests at story, feature, and regression levels
• Expand automated test coverage; Playwright experience is a strong plus
• Perform functional, integration, regression, and exploratory testing throughout the sprint lifecycle
• Identify, document, and triage defects with clear reproduction steps, severity, and impact
• Participate in Agile ceremonies: backlog refinement, sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, retrospectives
• Analyze logs/system behavior to support defect investigation and root cause analysis
• Collaborate with other QA engineers to improve standards, tooling, and best practices
• Use Azure DevOps for test management, defect tracking, and traceability
• Operate effectively in Windows 11 and use Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) for documentation and reporting

Requirements

• 5+ years experience as a QA Engineer / Software Test Engineer embedded on Agile teams
• Strong understanding of Agile and SAFe and QA’s role in iterative delivery
• Solid QA methodology knowledge (test design techniques, defect lifecycle management)
• Familiarity with TDD and BDD and working with acceptance criteria
• Ability to write clear, maintainable test cases and documentation
• Experience balancing manual testing with increasing automation
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills
• Self-motivated, accountable, comfortable in a fast-paced collaborative environment
• Willingness to learn new technologies and continuously improve

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in Public Safety, emergency response, or other mission-critical systems
• Hands-on Playwright (or similar modern automation frameworks)
• Familiarity with browser developer tools and debugging
• Experience with Azure Cloud, Kubernetes, and PaaS/SaaS architectures
• Working knowledge of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and SQL scripting

Location / work style

• Listed locations: Houston, Texas and Madison, Alabama
• Remote candidates may be considered based on qualifications
• Preference for Huntsville / Madison, AL