Quality Assurance Engineer

Role title

QA Software Engineer (Software Quality Assurance Engineer)

Department

Technology / Engineering

Location

Accra, Ghana, with planned visits to operating sites and other Complete Farmer markets for field, device and workflow validation as required

Grade

Experienced professional / engineer-level role; final internal grade and band subject to the approved job-grading framework

Reports to

Engineering Manager or Chief Technology Officer, according to the approved Technology organization structure

Direct reports

None

PRIMARY MANDATE Prevent material software defects from reaching users and operations by establishing risk-based test coverage, reliable automation, objective release evidence and fast production-quality learning across Complete Farmer's product ecosystem.

Detailed responsibilities

Quality strategy, risk analysis and test planning

• Translate the product roadmap, business process, architecture and operating risk into a quarterly and release-level quality strategy covering test levels, critical journeys, environments, data, tools, dependencies, owners and exit criteria.
• Participate in discovery, refinement and design reviews and challenge ambiguous, incomplete, contradictory, insecure, inaccessible or untestable requirements before development begins.
• Maintain risk-based coverage by product, user, workflow, integration, control point and failure mode, prioritizing tests by impact, likelihood, detectability, exposure and reversibility rather than treating every feature equally.
• Define test scenarios for happy paths, alternate paths, negative cases, boundary conditions, interrupted journeys, concurrency, duplicate requests, retries, timeout, partial failure, recovery and auditability.
• Agree quality entry and exit criteria with Product and Engineering and identify the evidence required for release, UAT, migration, pilot, rollback and post-release monitoring.

Functional, exploratory and end-to-end testing

• Test new and changed functionality across approved web, mobile, responsive and internal applications, including role-based journeys for buyers, growers, agents, field teams and authorized internal users.
• Execute focused exploratory testing around the highest-risk assumptions, integration boundaries, new technologies, complex states and recent defect clusters and document the charter, evidence and findings.
• Validate end-to-end workflows across onboarding, profiles, farms or sources, planning, orders, transactions, aggregation, quality, inventory, fulfilment, notifications, payment and reporting where included in the approved release scope.
• Verify calculations, dates, units, currencies, quantities, statuses, approvals, limits, time zones, localization, exports and reports against approved business rules and source records.
• Test error messages, validation, empty and loading states, interruption, retry, recovery, support routes and user feedback so failures are clear, safe and actionable rather than silent or destructive.

Test automation and continuous delivery quality

• Design and maintain a layered automation approach across API, service, contract, component, integration and critical user-interface tests, keeping coverage closest to the defect source where practical.
• Build readable, modular and version-controlled automated tests, fixtures, helpers and test data that can run consistently in local, pipeline and scheduled environments.
• Integrate quality checks into the approved continuous integration and delivery workflow and ensure failures produce actionable evidence without normalizing red pipelines or bypasses.
• Classify and eliminate flaky, redundant, slow or low-value checks; monitor stability, execution time, maintenance cost and false signal and quarantine only through an approved time-bound process.
• Select regression coverage by change impact and risk, keep critical suites current after each defect and release, and prevent automation counts from substituting for meaningful control coverage.

API, integration, data and migration assurance

• Validate API contracts, authentication, authorization, inputs, outputs, schemas, error handling, rate or volume conditions, idempotency, pagination, timeout, retry and backward compatibility.
• Test integrations with payment, messaging, identity, analytics, mapping, finance, logistics, communications and other approved services using controlled test accounts, stubs or sandboxes where appropriate.
• Use database and event evidence to reconcile records across product boundaries and detect duplication, loss, truncation, stale state, invalid transition, broken referential integrity or incorrect audit history.
• Design and execute data-migration validation covering source-to-target mapping, totals, samples, exceptions, access controls, rollback, historical traceability and post-migration reconciliation.
• Verify that asynchronous jobs, webhooks, queues, notifications and scheduled processes handle delay, reordering, duplication and partial failure without corrupting user or operational state.

Mobile, field, compatibility and accessibility quality

• Maintain an approved, evidence-based device, operating-system, browser, screen-size and network-condition matrix aligned with actual user and field profiles rather than attempting unsupported universal coverage.
• Test priority journeys under low bandwidth, intermittent connectivity, latency, offline operation, backgrounding, battery or storage pressure, interrupted upload and later synchronization where applicable.
• Validate conflict handling, retries, timestamps, geolocation, photos or documents, local caching and duplicate prevention so field evidence remains complete and traceable after reconnection.
• Assess keyboard use, focus, labels, contrast, text scaling, screen-reader semantics, error identification and understandable language against approved accessibility requirements and escalate material barriers.
• Coordinate field validation with Product, Field Operations and representative users and separate product defects from device, connectivity, training, process, configuration and data issues.

Non-functional, privacy and security-related testing

• Define and execute approved performance checks for response time, throughput, concurrency, resource use and degradation on critical journeys, APIs and batch processes using realistic data and load assumptions.
• Test resilience and recoverability through timeout, dependency failure, retry, restart, rollback, degraded service and data-reconciliation scenarios with Engineering and platform owners.
• Verify role-based access, session behaviour, sensitive-data exposure, input handling, upload controls, audit trails and common misuse cases within the QA scope and escalate suspected vulnerabilities immediately.
• Support Engineering or specialist security testing by preparing scope, accounts, environments, data and reproduction evidence and verify authorized remediation without presenting QA checks as a substitute for security ownership or penetration testing.
• Protect production and personal data in test work; use approved masking, synthetic data, access controls, retention and disposal and never copy live sensitive records into uncontrolled environments.

Defect, release and production-quality management

• Record defects with reproducible steps, environment, build, data, expected and actual result, severity rationale, evidence, user and business impact and affected scope sufficient for efficient diagnosis.
• Facilitate defect triage with Product and Engineering, distinguish severity from delivery priority, challenge misclassification and maintain transparent ownership, target release, retest and closure evidence.
• Prepare release-quality reports covering scope, change risk, tests planned and executed, coverage gaps, automation signal, defects, non-functional results, UAT, known risks, rollback readiness and QA recommendation.
• Withhold QA sign-off when mandatory evidence is missing, a critical defect remains open, a high-risk defect lacks authorized acceptance, the test environment is not representative or results are unreliable.
• Support production validation, monitoring and incident response; reproduce escapes, assess affected journeys and data, verify hotfixes and ensure root-cause actions create preventive tests or control improvements.

Quality operations, reporting and continuous improvement

• Maintain approved test cases, charters, automation, data, environments, results, defects and release evidence as one traceable quality record linked to the relevant requirement, build and deployment.
• Publish concise weekly and release-level quality insight covering risk, readiness, escape trends, defect ageing, automation stability, coverage gaps, environment health, decisions and recovery actions.
• Analyze defects by product, journey, component, source phase, root cause, severity, recurrence and escape point and propose preventive changes to requirements, design, coding, review, observability or tests.
• Improve templates, standards, tooling and team practices; coach Product, Engineering and business testers on testability, acceptance criteria, exploratory thinking, evidence and responsible defect reporting.
• Manage QA tools, devices, test accounts, licenses and external services within approved access, procurement, cost and information-security controls and remove obsolete access or data promptly.
• Model Complete Farmer's leadership standards of Clarity, Ownership and People-First leadership and its values of customer love, excellence, accountability, integrity, continuous learning and smart efficiency.

Required experience, qualifications and technical capabilities

Required experience

• Three to five years of progressively responsible software quality assurance or quality-engineering experience across web, mobile and API-enabled products in an agile product-development environment.
• Demonstrated experience designing and executing functional, exploratory, regression, integration, end-to-end and negative testing for production software with multiple user roles and workflow states.
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining automated API and/or user-interface tests in a programming or scripting language and integrating them into version control and continuous delivery workflows.
• Experience validating APIs, databases, asynchronous processing, third-party integrations, data migrations and cross-system reconciliation using logs, queries and service evidence.
• Evidence of reducing escaped defects or recurrence through risk-based coverage, strong defect investigation, root-cause learning and automation or process improvement.
• Experience testing mobile or responsive products across device, browser and network conditions; offline-first, field, multilingual or low-bandwidth products are strongly advantageous.
• Experience working directly with Product Managers, Designers, Engineers, business process owners and support or operations teams from discovery through production learning.
• Exposure to marketplaces, agritech, fintech, payments, supply chain, logistics, traceability, enterprise workflow or other operationally complex platforms is advantageous.
• Ability to present a practical portfolio or work sample demonstrating test design, automation, defect reasoning, API/data validation and a release-quality decision without disclosing prior employers' confidential information.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent demonstrated capability in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, Mathematics or a closely related discipline.
• Recognized software-testing or quality-engineering certification is advantageous but does not replace evidence of practical testing judgment, automation capability and production-quality outcomes.
• Working proficiency in at least one relevant language such as TypeScript or JavaScript, Python, Java or C#, with the ability to review code, build test utilities and diagnose failures from logs and stack traces.
• Strong SQL and data-analysis ability sufficient to create test data, validate transformations, reconcile records and explain data discrepancies without altering controlled production information.
• Clear written and verbal English, including concise defect reports, test strategies, release recommendations and risk explanations for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong systems thinking, curiosity, attention to evidence, constructive challenge, professional integrity and comfort making risk-based decisions under delivery pressure.
• Willingness to test in operational and field contexts, including planned travel to user, fulfilment or field locations when required to validate real workflows and constraints.