Senior Software QA Engineer

Who We Are! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more young people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

• Introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary and 
• Delivering livelihood boot camps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 500,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over300 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Livelihood Impact Fund,  Jack Dorsey’s #startsmall, CIFF andEchidna Giving. Educate! won a2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted bythe World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, anAl Jazeera documentary,BBC,The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.

Good to note: To Our Awesome Applicants!

We know that incredible candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don’t meet every requirement. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply! 

We’re looking for passionate individuals who believe in our mission and can bring unique perspectives to our team-not just those who check every box. We value diversity and strongly encourage women and individuals from all backgrounds to apply.

Position Overview 

Educate!, the largest youth skills service provider in East Africa, is seeking a Senior QA Engineer to join our ambitious and cross-functional Technology team. We are looking for a quality-obsessed engineer who is passionate about ensuring our technology products deliver reliable, impactful experiences for the youth we serve.

In this role, you’ll be the driving force behind quality across our products-partnering closely with the Product Owner to define what “done” looks like, owning hands-on QA review, and helping our engineering team build a culture where quality is everyone’s responsibility. You’ll establish QA standards from the ground up, evaluate and implement end-to-end testing tools, and embed automated testing into our development pipelines.

This is a high-impact role on a growing Technology team. You’ll join a motivated, passionate, overachieving international team with a vision to design solutions that will impact millions of youth annually across Africa.

You are the right fit for this role if you:

• Are passionate about building reliable, high-quality technology product
• Take ownership of quality and hold yourself and others to a high bar
• Are collaborative and thrive working closely with product and engineering stakeholders
• Have independently driven QA practices and testing strategy in a team
• Have a proactive mindset-you see gaps in quality and take initiative to address them

What You’ll Do  

Review & Release Readiness

Partner with the Product Owner to define acceptance criteria, validate feature completeness, and ensure releases meet quality standards before they reach the youth we serve. This is the primary focus of the role.

• Collaborate with the Product Owner to establish a shared definition of “done” for features and releases
•  Perform hands-on exploratory, functional, and regression testing of new features and bug fixes
• Triage, document, and verify bugs throughout the sprint cycle
• Provide a final quality sign-off before code is deployed to production
• Communicate release readiness and surface risks to the team in a timely manner

QA Standards & Strategy

Define and document testing standards, methodologies, and quality benchmarks for the engineering team. Build the QA playbook so that quality is repeatable, scalable, and not dependent on tribal knowledge.

• Establish test plans, test case templates, and acceptance criteria standards
• Define severity and priority frameworks for bug classification
• Document QA processes and best practices for the team to follow
• Continuously improve QA processes based on retrospectives and release outcomes

E2E Testing Tooling & Framework Selection

Evaluate, recommend, and implement the right end-to-end testing tools and frameworks based on the team’s automation maturity, technical stack, and maintenance capacity.

• Research and compare E2E testing frameworks based on team needs and product requirements
• Assess the appropriate level of automation given the team’s size, velocity, and technical constraints
• Drive adoption of selected tools and provide guidance to engineers on writing E2E tests
• Own the E2E test suite and ensure it remains reliable, maintainable, and valuable

Testing Infrastructure & Developer Accountability

Support the integration of automated tests into CI/CD pipelines and hold the engineering team accountable for writing and maintaining their own unit and integration tests. Quality is a team effort-this function ensures it stays that way.

• Integrate automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines to run on every commit, PR, or deploy
• Define and track test coverage expectations for unit and integration tests
• Review test plans and advocate for testability in code reviews and architecture discussions
• Establish quality gates that prevent untested or undertested code from reaching production
• Develop quality assurance procedures in collaboration with the Product Owner and development team

Who You Are

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or any other Technology-related course, and a minimum of 5 years of work experience in a QA or Software Quality Engineering role
• Strong hands-on experience with both manual and automated testing methodologies
• Experience evaluating and implementing E2E testing frameworks
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools and integrating automated tests into deployment pipelines
• Experience defining QA standards, test plans, and quality processes for a team
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, particularly with product and engineering stakeholders
• Experience working with program delivery and data collection platforms such as USSD, SMS, WhatsApp, etc. is a plus
• Basic knowledge of project management tools such as JIRA or equivalent
• Experience working with a startup is a plus
• Fits our Five Culture Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here 

What We Offer 

• A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team. 
• Competitive salary  based on experience.
• Learning & growth opportunities  

Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!

Terms 

• Location is based in Kampala, Uganda

Our Culture & Tenets(Values)

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey. 

• We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We are purpose-driven, focused on impact, and prioritize what truly matters. We listen to youth, design our efforts around their needs, and ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences they value.
• We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results-proactively identifying problems and seeking solutions without waiting or stopping at what's requested.
• We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded and continuously try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
• We are One Team, Many Views - We value all individuals, believe diverse ideas and open dialogue drive excellence, foster a supportive and respectful environment where everyone can freely express themselves. We work as one team and prioritize the organization's mission over personal or team interests.
• We have the Startup Mindset - We innovate relentlessly to grow our impact, we never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.”We constantly challenge the status quo, embrace change, and move quickly toward our vision. Unafraid of failure, we question anything that hinders progress.

Every person at Educate! - from interns to the executive director - is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do.  Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team. 

We’re committed to ensuring all candidates are screened for child and youth safety. As part of the process, candidates must successfully complete our standard background verification and safeguarding review in accordance with local legal standards. Educate! reserves the right to withdraw an offer of employment if any screening results indicate potential risks to youth.