Looking for a QA Job? Come Work for Telligent!

UPDATED: It’s now December, 2010 and I’ve got another open position on my team! Everything below still applies. Contact info is at the bottom, or use the link on the blog’s sidebar. I’d love to talk with you if you’re interested!

Telligent is expanding our QA/testing team and we’re starting the process of looking for passionate, detail-oriented folks who might be a fit for the team. You’ll be working for me in my new role as the QA Team Lead, and you’ll be testing our neat products like Telligent Community, Telligent Enterprise, Telligent Analytics, plus a host of cool add-ons like our Mail Gateway and SharePoint integration products.

I don’t have a formal job description yet, but frankly, most job descriptions stink or don’t match reality.  Here’s my unofficial, completely unapproved description of what you’ll be doing:

• Working hand-in-hand with our Product team to create testable acceptance criteria for each new work item (feature, user story, bug ticket).
• Developing automated test suites using a number of tools like Selenium, Watir, Cucumber, and Visual Studio’s web test.
• Creating, updating, and executing test plans for all our products.
• Creating and updating matrices for supported platforms, then executing test plans against those. (You’ll be helping stand up and maintain those platforms in various virtualization environments.)
• Working hard to exercise the systems through exploratory testing.

Below are some of the tools we’re using or exploring in our QA work right now. I’m all over using any tool that will bring value to our work, so if there’s something you’ve had success with then let me know.

• UI testing: Selenium, Watir, possibly VS web test
• Languages: C#, Ruby
• Other cool toys: Cucumber, PowerShell

What you’ll need to bring to the table:

• A detail-oriented mindset.
• Passion about improving quality.
• Passion about improving yourself – what else are you doing other than reading my blog?
• Excellent communication skills in e-mail, written documentation, and verbally.
• Critical thought. Talk to me about how you approach problems.
• Patience and a pragmatic outlook. I plan on changing the world, but it will be a long haul. We’ll lose occasional battles but the war will be won. Fill in other over-used clichés here.

Notice I didn’t mention much about specific skills? What you’ve got in your head and heart are far more important to me. That said, it would be helpful, but not required, if you’ve got some exposure to the following:

• Software development experience. Something .NET-ish best, other languages are fine too.
• Experience with SQL Server 2005 and/or SQL Server 2008. (Exposure to SQL of any type helpful.)
• Understanding of software development lifecycle.
• Exposure to Lean and Agile development. (If you’ve decided neither of those disciplines are of value then please look elsewhere for an environment that will make you happy. I’m emphatic about both and you won’t be a good fit if you’ve looked Lean and Agile over and don’t care for them.)
• Previous experience in a QA role.

Telligent’s located in Dallas, but we have remote workers scattered all over the country and a few overseas as well. I’m happy to work with remote folks, but you’ll need to demonstrate that you’re able to be productive from a home office.

You’ll be working for me, so you may want to do a little digging around the blogosphere, Twitter, and the region’s dev community to see if that’s for you or not. I’m strong coffee with strong opinions that I’m happy to change when a well-thought debate is put forth. I care deeply about my work and I care even more deeply about my teams. Look up some folks who’ve worked for me or with me and get their opinions. (Steve, James, Brian, Todd, Nate, Sean, Dave, Leon) I didn’t ask them if it was OK, but I think you’ll get varied, honest feedback from them. 

Still interested? Drop me an e-mail with your resume: JHolmes AT Telligent DOT com. Feel free to drop me a note via the contact link on the blog’s sidebar, too.