Currently going from strength to strength, with new clients and growing existing ones, we are looking to hire a full-time or part-time QA tester to join our team.

 

A little bit about us

Founded in 2011, CookiesHQ is a growing software development consultancy in Bristol, UK. Our team consists of back end and front end developers, a UI designer, three project managers, a head of marketing as well as the two founders.

Since 2011 we’ve grown organically by treating our staff and client with the highest respect, openness and standards. This is how we’ve built a strong customer base who have been growing with us for many years.

Early on, we decided to offer everyone working at CookiesHQ the opportunity to work from any location they choose, as a one-off or on a regular basis, whether it’s the office, home, their favourite coffee shop or a different country.

As a result, we now have a team that is geographically spread but well equipped to collaborate.

We’re very keen on self-development and work-life balance, so you will get dedicated self-improvement time and won’t be asked or expected to work nights or weekends. Most people work from 9.30am to around 6pm and then catch some rest or enjoy time with their families.

 

 

How do we work?

We work on projects in ‘pods’, i.e. teams within the team. A pod is usually made of a project manager, a designer, a lead back-end developer and a lead front-end developer. Additional developers join the project if and when needed. We usually work in sprints and tend not to split time between projects.

We also give our team a great sense of ownership for each project as well as the opportunity to meet the clients, participate in the planning meetings and have a direct channel of communication if and when necessary (especially for more technical projects or for projects where we collaborate directly with the CTO of the client company). This allows you to understand the context of the projects that you work on and make rational decisions based on the business use cases.

Our stack

For most projects, you will either work on a Ruby on Rails or WordPress environment. We use Ruby on Rails as our base to develop and scale products for most of our startups, and, sometimes, are doing consultative and performance work on large WordPress websites.

All our recent apps use Webpack inside Rails for both CSS and JavaScript.

We believe in a web that is accessible and that mostly relies on server-rendered pages, using CSS to make them pretty and JavaScript to enhance the user experience.

We’re not against ReactJS or VueJS, but we like to take an iterative approach on our JavaScript and only bring heavy libraries when they help us solve problems rather than use them as a default.

Here is a larger view of our stack:

• Ruby on Rails
• Webpacker
• SASS
• Vanilla JS
• Some node.js / EmberJS projects
• Heroku for a lot of our deployments
• Amazon S3 and Cloudfront
• Some Linode servers
• Capistrano and Ansible
• WordPress

 

A little bit about you and the role

We are looking for a manual software tester/test analyst to join our team of developers and project managers. Your main responsibility will be to ensure that all our projects are working as expected and to specifications before being deployed to production to the end-users.

For many members of the team, the thing they love most about their job is the variety of exciting projects they get to work with.
As the only dedicated tester at CookiesHQ you’ll have the opportunity to get involved with every single product we work on. From VOD platforms to educational apps and marketplaces, you’ll manage the testing process from end to end for an impressive range of clients.

The role can be part-time or full-time and we can work around your availability if you are a parent, a carer or have other commitments.

The role:

• Interpret specifications and produce test plans and strategies.
• Test web and mobile apps and APIs across multiple devices and browsers
• Identify bugs and glitches, write clear reports and communicate to the team
• Keep track of the issues with the project manager and re-run tests when they have been fixed
• Write, maintain and review test documentation
• Be the voice of quality

Required skills and experience:

• Strong analytical, organisational and problem-solving skills
• Detail-oriented
• Able to work closely with the developers and project managers, but also independently when needed
• Confident to voice your ideas or concerns, and give recommendations to improve the quality of our projects
• Aptitude to learn and broaden your own skillset
• At least a year of commercial experience within software testing, and able to hit the ground running
• Knowledge of accessibility standards and testing practices is a bonus

Salary and benefits:

• A friendly team environment, currently remote, but we do intend to go back to our lovely Bristol office when it is safe to do so.
• Flexible working hours
• 25 days holidays (pro-rata) + bank holidays
• Pension scheme
• Life insurance
• Laptop and equipment for a home office if needed (monitor, devices, chair etc)
• Learning and personal development opportunities
• 7% company’s profit redistribution scheme after your first year
• £25K+ depending on experience

How to apply and what to expect

To apply, please send your CV and any relevant information to Nathalie, our MD (email: [email protected]).

In your first email, please explain your current experience and why you would be a great addition to our team.

Following your email, we will contact you for a first interview, usually in the presence of Nathalie (MD) and Nic (CTO). Here we will talk about you, your background, your aspirations.

If you are successful, then we will then set a day where we will aim for you to pair with one of Project Managers. This will give us the opportunity to observe your testing skills and give you the chance to ask questions directly to the team.

After those two rounds, we should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you would be a good fit for our team, and we should be ready to give a final answer.