The Technical QA Analyst ensures that all code changes and product releases are thoroughly tested and correctly implemented before deployment. The primary goal of the role is to protect product quality by identifying bugs, usability issues, and unintended side effects early, reducing incidents in live environments.
The role also plays a key part in problem definition: working closely with end users and stakeholders to understand reported issues, reproduce them accurately, and assess their scope, severity, and root conditions.
This role is expected to grow its automation capability — moving from manual and exploratory testing towards developing and maintaining automated test scripts and frameworks that support faster, repeatable release validation.
Key Responsibilities
Testing & Quality Assurance
- Test code changes, fixes, and new features prior to release, ensuring they meet functional and technical requirements.
- Validate that deployments have been implemented correctly across environments (e.g. test, staging, production).
- Identify bugs, regressions, and edge cases before and after releases.
- Document test results clearly, including steps to reproduce issues and expected vs actual behaviour.
- Support release sign-off by providing confidence-based quality assessments.
- Develop, maintain and execute automated test scripts and test plans to validate software functionality and regression coverage.
- Contribute to the build-out of automated testing frameworks, working towards integration within the CI/CD pipeline over time.
Issue Reproduction & Analysis
- Work with end users, product teams, and support teams to understand reported issues.
- Recreate problems in test environments to determine:
- How widespread the issue is
- Under what conditions it occurs
- Whether it is intermittent or consistent
- What makes the issue better or worse
- Distinguish between user error, configuration issues, data-related problems, and genuine defects.
- Provide structured findings to developers to support fast and accurate fixes.
Collaboration & Communication
- Work closely with software engineers, product managers, and IT colleagues throughout the development and release lifecycle.
- Act as a bridge between technical teams and non-technical users by translating user experience into clear technical detail.
- Provide feedback to improve testing processes, release checklists, and documentation.
Process Improvement
- Help improve test coverage and testing approaches over time (with a growing emphasis on automation, alongside manual and exploratory testing where appropriate).
- Contribute to quality standards for releases and change management.
- Identify recurring problem patterns and suggest preventative improvements.
Skills & Experience
Essential
- Experience working in a technical or IT environment (QA, testing, support, engineering, or similar).
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to methodically reproduce and isolate technical issues.
- Excellent attention to detail and a structured approach to testing.
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, particularly when explaining issues and impact.
- Comfortable working with developers and technical systems.
- Foundational understanding of, or demonstrable interest in, test automation — including scripting, automation frameworks or tools (e.g. Selenium, Cypress, Playwright) and API testing.
Desirable
- Experience testing software applications, platforms, or internal systems.
- Understanding of software development lifecycles and release processes.
- Familiarity with bug tracking or ticketing tools.
- Basic understanding of code, APIs, databases, or system configuration — including the ability to write or interpret basic test scripts.
- Experience with regression testing, UAT, or exploratory testing.
- Hands-on experience with automation tools or CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
Personal Attributes
- Curious and investigative mindset.
- Patient and persistent when tracking down complex or intermittent issues.
- Comfortable asking questions and challenging assumptions.
- User-focused: concerned with how real people experience the product.
- Calm and structured, particularly during incidents or release windows.
- Eager to grow technical skills, particularly in test automation and quality engineering.
What Success Looks Like in This Role
- Fewer bugs and incidents reaching live environments.
- Faster resolution of reported issues due to clear reproduction and diagnosis.
- Increased confidence in releases from both technical teams and stakeholders.
- Improved understanding of product behaviour and risk areas over time.
- Growing test automation coverage, reducing reliance on manual regression testing over time.
Why join YouGov?
Join our global team to help us achieve our social mission: to make millions of people’s opinions heard for the benefit of our local, national, and international communities.
Understanding diversity of opinion requires diversity of background. Although our global panel of millions of people worldwide powers our research, our biggest asset is our people. If our research is to be truly representative of what the world thinks, we need people from all walks of life to be part of the team to bring their perspective to the work we do.
Life at YouGov
We are driven by a set of shared values. We are fast, fearless, and innovative. We work diligently to get it right. We are guided by accuracy, ethics, and proven methodologies. We respect and trust each other, bringing these values into everything that we do.
We strive to provide YouGovers with best-in-class benefits to support their physical, financial, and emotional wellbeing. We want our employees to have a sense of belonging and uniqueness in a supportive workplace, so they can bring their full selves to work.
Equal Opportunity Employer
As an Equal Opportunity Employer, qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity or expression, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, marital status, age, disability, genetic information, HIV status, political affiliation, socioeconomic background, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law or in line with our responsibilities as a fair and ethic employer. All employment decisions are made based on occupational qualifications, merit, and business need.
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