Senior Quality Assurance Analyst

Knowledge Services is seeking a Senior Quality Assurance Analyst (QA) for a long-term project in support of the State of Indiana.

• Applicants must be currently local to Indianapolis and able to work a hybrid work schedule and be onsite weekly working downtown Indianapolis
• Please note that we cannot accept any candidates requiring C2C or those requiring sponsorship for a work visa.

Senior Quality Assurance Analyst (QA) Responsibilities:

• • Senior QA Analyst will own the end-to-end quality strategy — from test architecture and automation framework design through defect management, UAT coordination, and release sign-off.
• • This is a technical leadership role requiring deep expertise across manual and automated testing, CI/CD integration, and the ability to communicate quality risk clearly to state agency stakeholders.

• Test Strategy & Architecture
• • Design and own the master test strategy across functional, regression, integration, performance, security, and UAT workstreams.
• • Define quality gates, entry/exit criteria, and go/no-go frameworks for sprint releases and major deployments.
• • Establish traceability from requirements through test execution to defect closure.

• Test Automation
• • Design, build, and maintain automated UI regression suites (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or equivalent).
• • Develop and maintain API test automation (Postman, RestAssured, or SoapUI) for backend services and system integrations.
• • Integrate automated suites into the CI/CD pipeline (Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or equivalent); automate regression gates at each build promotion.

• Manual & Specialized Testing
• • Lead functional, integration, end-to-end, and exploratory testing across concurrent workstreams.
• • Execute performance/load testing (JMeter, LoadRunner, or equivalent) to validate scalability under peak usage.
• • Perform SQL-based data integrity testing to verify backend accuracy, transformation logic, and data governance compliance.

• Defect Management & Reporting
• • Own the full defect lifecycle: triage, prioritization, tracking, root cause analysis, and closure verification.
• • Deliver test execution reports, defect density analyses, and release readiness summaries to project leadership and stakeholders.
• • Maintain and report QA metrics: defect escape rate, test coverage, automation coverage ratio, and mean time to detect/resolve.

• UAT & Stakeholder Engagement
• • Plan and facilitate UAT with business users; manage session scheduling, issue capture, resolution tracking, and formal sign-off.
• • Serve as primary QA liaison to program staff; communicate testing progress, risk exposure, and quality posture at all project levels.

• Team & Quality Leadership
• • Mentor junior QA staff; establish automation code standards, peer review practices, and a shared QA knowledge base.
• • Champion shift-left testing and quality integration across planning, development, and deployment decision-making.

• Senior Quality Assurance Analyst (QA) Required Skills & Experience:
• • 5–7 years of QA experience; minimum 2 years in a senior or lead capacity on large-scale government IT projects.
• • Hands-on experience designing and implementing test automation frameworks (UI and/or API) in a production delivery environment.
• • Proven CI/CD pipeline integration experience (Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or equivalent).
• • Experience leading UAT coordination with non-technical government end users.
• • Proficiency in SQL for backend data validation and integrity testing.
• • Track record of audit-defensible test documentation (test strategies, test plans, RTMs, defect logs, test summary reports).
• • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related field.

• Preferred Qualifications
• • Prior state government experience with DFR, FSSA, or comparable state human services IT contracts; familiarity with SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, or CHIP eligibility systems.
• • Experience with performance/load testing tools (JMeter, LoadRunner, or Gatling).
• • Scripting proficiency in Python, JavaScript, Java, or C# for automation development.

• Certifications (Preferred)
• • ISTQB Advanced Level — Test Analyst, Test Manager, or Test Automation Engineer
• • Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA)
• • SAFe for Teams or equivalent Agile certification