Sr. Quality Analyst

Job Description

The PBS KIDS team is seeking an experienced and highly motivated Senior Quality Analyst to support activities across a wide range of Ready To Learn funded initiatives within the PBS KIDS games and distribution channels portfolio. From test planning and execution to risk management and process improvement, you will play a critical role in supporting, implementing, and leading QA activities that will be fundamental to our success. This position is funded by the Ready To Learn (RTL) grant from the US Department of Education. The Ready To Learn project is a joint initiative of PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) focusing on the development and dissemination of content across media to improve learning, with an emphasis on building career readiness and literacy skills for children ages 2-8.

PBS KIDS develops educational games designed for kids 2-8 years old that reflect the curriculum goals, stories, and characters in PBS KIDS shows. The PBS KIDS game content library consists of over 200 educational HTML5 games. In addition to this content production pipeline, PBS builds and maintains a number of digital products to enable content distribution, such as pbskids.org and the PBS KIDS Games App. These products reach millions of users per month across a wide variety of devices. PBS KIDS is constantly releasing updates to these products to improve user experience, update technologies, fix bugs, and other business reasons.
Our ideal candidate has experience working with web and mobile game technologies across diverse teams, is detail-oriented, and is passionate about digital media and delivering the highest quality experience across the many devices that kids, parents, caregivers, and educators use to access PBS KIDS.

Key responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:
• Serve as the lead testing liaison for RTL games between internal and external teams (e.g., 3rd party vendor, content managers, product managers, developers) and support all quality assurance activities in varying product funnels including but not limited to Ready To Learn games, the PBS KIDS Games App, Spring Roll, and others.
• Partner with the QA Manager and external teams to define, implement, and optimize our QA strategy, best practices, and process changes across our distribution channels to support RTL initiatives and content releases.
• Proactively identify and communicate risks, inefficiencies, and improvements for QA activities.
• Review business/functional requirements, game design documents and technical specifications for RTL games; provide feedback on any requirements or design ambiguity, and support areas to be tested with a test plan.
• Contribute to and maintain the growing library of test cases, complete test planning, and the execution and scheduling of test cycles across the portfolio.
• Analyze results of tests and determine the cause of failures.
• Use test management and defect tracking tools to create and track the progress of defects from development through to resolution.
• Perform analysis and identify candidates for future test automation, and work with Engineering to identify the appropriate technology required for effective test automatiom.
• Other projects as assigned.

Requirements for success:
• 3-5 years of relevant experience a QA Analyst or QA Engineering role (mobile and web game technologies, a plus).
• Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering, Systems Engineering, Human Factors Engineering, or a related discipline. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered.
• Ability to serve as a resourceful, self-directed, and creative problem-solver who can meet aggressive and overlapping deadlines.
• Exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to provide explanations of technical issues, status, and project risks in a timely manner and with precision.
• Experience working in common software development methodologies (e.g., Agile, Waterfall, Kanban).
• Experience with accessibility testing and assistive technologies, a plus.
• Experience with managing remote contractors and crowdsourced testing platforms a plus
• Familiarity with children's privacy guidelines, a plus (e.g., COPPA, FERPA).

PBS is an Equal Opportunity Employer in accordance with the EEOC and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d2e6w7-18-217-178-138-42 in your application.