Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented QA Manager (Storefront) 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).