QA Manager - Merchant

Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented QA Manager (Merchant) to join our team. 

We are a young, dynamic, hyper growth company looking for smart, creative, hard-working people with integrity to join us. We offer a market related, Total Remuneration Package which allows full flexibility according to your needs, a great work environment and a promise that you won’t be bored as long as you are prepared for a challenge and want to build something great.

Who’s who in the tech space

The position reports to the QA Director 

Your mission should you choose to accept it:     

• Lead and provide strategic oversight to multiple QA teams across diverse products and stakeholders, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives.
• Foster seamless coordination and robust communication channels among QA teams and various product stakeholders to build a cohesive quality assurance strategy.
• Cultivate a self-sustaining environment where teams are empowered to make autonomous decisions, thereby allowing you to dedicate efforts towards strategic enhancements and innovation in the QA domain.
• Engage actively in QA processes to garner insights and drive technical advancements, leveraging firsthand experience and hand-on involvement to refine processes and develop strategic initiatives.
• Build and nurture strategic alliances with product teams within and across divisions to synchronise QA goals with broader business strategies.
• Contribute to the Community of Practice for Quality Assurance within the engineering landscape to share knowledge and best practices.
• Spearhead recruitment efforts to attract top talent for the QA team, ensuring a robust and competent workforce.
• Elevate development quality by formulating and instituting superior testing processes and practices in collaboration with engineers and engineering managers.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to architect and manage an integrated roadmap for automation initiatives, with a focus on enhancing efficiency and coverage.
• Play a pivotal role in refining the automation strategy and expanding automation coverage for both UI and service-based tests.
• Ensure teams continuously develop, execute and maintain comprehensive test cases to identify and address bugs, aligned with best practices and strategic objectives.
• Oversee the creation and maintenance of sustainable and reusable test data, ensuring data integrity and efficiency.
• Proactively identify testing gaps and lead the collaborative resolution process with automation engineers, engineers, and QA Analysts.
• Maintain rigorous standards in bug identification, documentation and tracking in line with strategic goals and industry best practices.
• Oversee regression testing operations, ensuring robust quality control when addressing resolved bugs.
• Ensure continuous feedback from production issues is integrated into the QA test base by reevaluating coverage and updating test cases to uphold adequate coverage.
• Strategically increase code coverage across the technology stack by identifying critical tests at the unit, service, and functional levels.
• Develop and disseminate detailed status reports based on test outcomes to team leaders, highlighting implications for overall project plans and timelines.
• Initiate and drive programs aimed at elevating QA visibility in project progress, building dynamic relationships with product stakeholders to ensure early and proactive QA engagement in upcoming projects.
• Mentor and coach the test teams and engineers, enhancing their capabilities in test methodologies and automation practices.

Skills needed:

• Stakeholder Relationship Management: Demonstrated ability to build and maintain effective relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders across multiple teams and divisions.
• Leadership and Coordination: Proven experience in leading and coordinating cross-functional efforts, ensuring alignment and achievement of common quality objectives across various teams.
• Team-Oriented Approach: A team player who excels as an active listener, mentor and communicator, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Decisive and Resilient: Exhibits solid reasoning and decision-making abilities, thriving under pressure and adapting to fast-paced environments.
• Passion for Quality and Innovation: Deeply passionate about technology, systems and most importantly, quality assurance, with a drive to implement and sustain innovative solutions.
• Continuous Learner: Naturally curious and committed to staying abreast of the latest trends and advancements in the testing craft.
• Self-Motivated and Adaptive: Highly self-driven with an aptitude for rapid learning and adaptability to new tools and processes.
• Efficient Worker: Capable of working efficiently both independently and as part of a collaborative team environment.
• Analytical and Problem-Solving Expertise: Strong analytical skills with a keen ability to understand, critique and refine requirements to meet strategic goals.
• Effective Communicator: Possesses strong communication skills, essential for articulating complex ideas and facilitating productive discussions across diverse teams.

Qualifications and experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree or Advanced Diploma in Information Systems, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering and a minimum of 5 years of Software QA experience in a software/technology environment is required, 2 years of which should be in a QA management role.
• In the event that a candidate does not have a Bachelor’s Degree or an Advanced Diploma (in Information Systems, Computer Science, Mathematics, or Engineering), an equivalent experience requirement must be met, which equates to a minimum of 8 years of Software QA management experience in a software/technology environment, 4 years of which should be in a QA management role. 
• Experience managing QA efforts across multiple teams to ensure alignment with best practices and cohesive QA strategies.
• Strong background in designing and implementing scalable QA processes and strategies to support continuous improvement and efficiency.
• Proven experience overseeing the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) testing process (development, unit, API, performance, system testing, etc.).
• Hands-on expertise in both glassbox and behavior based testing methodologies, including writing clear, concise, and comprehensive test plans and cases.
• Proficiency in SQL and scripting, with experience in tools such as Jenkins or other CI/CD applications.
• Experience with automation frameworks (e.g., Robot Framework, Playwright, etc ) and a strong understanding of configuration management and version control.
• Experience with performance and security testing is an advantage.
• Ability to quickly adapt to new technologies and tools to improve testing processes.

Think you’ve been challenged before? Think again!

• Scale: Over 2.5 million happy shoppers shop online on takealot.com. Show them what you can do.
• Learn: We work with the best of the best, and then some. Code alongside industry leaders and upskill in record time.
• Grow: Expand your career in the fast-growing Takealot Group: takealot.com, Superbalist.com and Mr D. We like to promote from within: Here’s your chance.

The Environment:

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer-centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e-commerce company in Africa.
• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve.
• We are short on ego and high on output.
• We are doers and not only thinkers, its all in the execution after all.
• We love what we do and what we are creating.

Let’s talk about life @ Takealot Group

• The power is in your hands: We offer a market-related, Total Remuneration Package that allows full flexibility according to your needs. Go on, be the master of your own destiny.
• No doors: We aren’t fans of stuffy offices or siloed work environments. See someone you like? High five, collab and make something great.
• Remote working: Love water cooler chats and working from home? Takealot.com offers a remote working model with the option to come into the office. The choice is yours to be at the office, fully remote or a mix.
• Mentorship programme: We aren’t kidding when we say the people with the best people win. Now’s your chance to be one of the best, by learning from the best.
• Naspers Tech Community & Online Learning: Share ideas and grow with global industry leaders who are all just a Slack message away. Love to learn? Up-skill with free access to courses on MyAcademy, Udacity, Coursera and more.
• Good times: Get to know the other extraordinary minds at takealot.com during regular social events and out-of-office activities (think hikes, think mini golf, think good times).
• Staff discount: Millions of products across 28 departments. What more could you ask for?
• Birthday leave: Cake Day all the way. Enjoy your day off - you deserve it. 
• Right tools, right job: Mac or Windows, two monitors or one. Whatever your preference, you’ll work on the latest tech, off the latest tech.
• Help when you need it most: Confidential counselling, legal support, and financial guidance, for free, anytime, anywhere. 
• Tech stack (for days): ReactJS, Python, Scala, Kotlin, Swift, Google Cloud, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes, and all things machine learning. If you build it, they will come.
• Free parking: No more 5km fun runs to your desk (unless you want to).