Software QA Analyst

Palo Alto Software is looking for a talented QA Analyst to join our LivePlan app team. This position is open to Oregon residents only.

About our company and Eugene, Oregon

We're a friendly team of 70 diverse, world-class experts. Each team member demonstrates our company values while adding positive contributions to our culture. Please review all the information on our culture at this link before applying to find out if it's a place where you can thrive.

Please visit liveplan.com to learn how our business planning and tracking products and training help achieve our mission to help people succeed in business. We believe that when we help one small business owner grow their business, we're helping an entire community, which makes our work matter.

Our agile and innovative team of independent thinkers and creative problem-solvers enjoy work-life integration and full, interesting lives. We have a hybrid work environment with outcome-based schedules, meaning we work remotely but spend some time together in person, and we track outcomes, not hours. Work is a thing you do, not a place you go. 9 to 5, M-F may not be how do your best work. That's ok!

Our location in Eugene supports access to interesting and challenging work in a growing tech scene in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Eugene's commute times and our drinking water from the McKenzie River Watershed are some of the best in the nation, and homes are more affordable than you'd find in Portland, Seattle, or the Bay Area.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Please see our diversity and inclusion statement here.

Benefits we provide:

• Competitive salary
• Health (general and mental healthcare), vision, dental, ortho for you and your family
• Flexible Spending Account
• Health Reimbursement Account
• Generous paid time off and holidays
• Paid community volunteer time
• 401(k) with a match
• Relocation reimbursement
• Hybrid workplace, flexible schedule, and no-meeting Fridays
• Discounted gym membership or wellness program reimbursements
• Fun company events
• A diverse and inclusive environment
• Values-based company culture
• Opportunities to serve on the "LiveWell" committee, Charitable Fund committee, and much more

About Our Product Team

Small, full-stack squads comprised of engineers and QA analysts work alongside our product manager, UX designer, and user researchers to understand the needs of our customers and collaborate closely through the entire value pipeline-from concept to development to delivery. As we engage the continuous discovery+delivery model, we deliver high-impact solutions to our customers on a regular cadence. Each member of the team is empowered to engage the big picture, bring their ideas to bear on tough problems, and experience the satisfaction of having a palpable impact on the outcomes of the team.

About this role:

This is a full-time, permanent, exempt position reporting to the Director of QA. The starting salary range is $65,000-$75,000 based on experience.

We are looking for an experienced QA Analyst with a strong understanding of best practices in software quality assurance, a track record of success, and excellent communication skills. The QA Analyst is our strongest defense against coding defects and other quality problems finding their way into our products.

Responsibilities of the QA team include manual testing of our LivePlan SAAS app, clear, concise, and complete bug reporting and verification, other testing activities as needed, and contributing to team improvement activities and collaboration with other teams to ensure we're producing the highest quality products possible.

What Success Looks Like:

• Regular completion of release candidate testing on schedule (separate from any delays due to defects found, deployment issues, or other issues not under their control)
• Well-organized testing activity with a sensible mix of methodical and ad-hoc testing
• Strong, detailed, and current knowledge of the subject matter of their assigned project (functionality, priorities, schedule, etc.)
• Solid product quality, as reflected in the achievement of strong and/or improving marks on our established quality metrics
• Healthy, productive working relationships with other testers, with developers and designers on the team
• Regular contributions to team planning, collaboration, continuous improvement, and morale building activities

Duties include

Manual testing

• Test new and existing features on their assigned product or project
• Work with developers and other QA testers to devise testing strategies for new features
• Perform regular ad-hoc application testing to find non-obvious product defects
• Collaborate with designers and developers to review newly started development work and talk through testing strategies, areas of potential weakness, etc.
• Test pull requests to ensure that the application works properly and new development work has not introduced notable defects into existing functionality
• Verify that our project works properly on all supported operating systems, browsers, and devices
• Work with QA lead and other testers to create and maintain test plans for regression coverage of existing features and core functionality
• Plan and execute regression testing to prevent the introduction of new bugs
• Contribute to the maintenance of standardized and well-structured regression testing plans for the application's existing functionality

Bug reporting and verification

• Discover and document quality issues during the pre-release testing phase
• Write clear, concise, and complete bug reports to enable bugs to be fixed efficiently
• Maintain complete and accurate bug report metadata to support quality analysis, reporting, and continuous improvement efforts
• Reproduce and document any reported issues in production
• Retest resolved bugs to verify that they are no longer reproducible
• Investigate and reproduce issues seen in pre-release builds and on production
• Work with QA lead and others as directed to triage new bug reports and to review and reprioritize existing bugs
• Contribute to the regular review and grooming of the bug pool to ensure that known issues are valid, well documented, and sensibly prioritized

Other testing activities

• Work with customer advocates as needed to help resolve customer issues
• Perform or contribute to load, stress, and other performance testing as needed
• Perform accessibility testing as needed
• Perform or contribute to security and intrusion testing as needed
• Perform or contribute to automated testing as needed
• Create or collaborate with others to find or create test data or other resources necessary to test our projects properly
• Collaborate on ways to maintain quality, reduce risks and release frequently

What you bring to the job:

• Ability to be self-directed
• Excellent communication skills
• Team mindset and a positive contributor to our company culture
• Desire to learn new things every day
• Dependability and willingness to be consistently available to the team on-site

Education, experience, & skills required:

• College degree in a related field, or equivalent experience
• Professional QA experience
• Experience working with automated testing tools
• Experience using JIRA or similar documentation solutions
• Ability to stay organized when working with multiple tasks, teams, and changing schedules and priorities
• Experience working as part of an CI/CD development team is a plus

Apply today!