Test Manager

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

One post will be working within our Digital Services Quality Assurance and Testing (DS-QAT) team, which is an enabling function that works across multiple directorates, overseeing multiple work streams and multiple projects taking ownership of our QAT strategy as part of our broader risk-based approach.

The second post will be working within our Public Sector Division (PSD) producing public sector income and expenditure data that feeds into National Accounts, and estimates of public sector spending, borrowing, and debt as part of the Public Sector Finance statistics. This role will be responsible for ensuring that systems, services, and end-to-end processes are tested, integrated, and operationally ready.

Job description

The roles will be responsible for ensuring that systems, services, and end-to-end processes are tested, integrated, and operationally ready.

You will work closely with business leads within the Programme as well as internal and external developers and suppliers, to identify the resources required to perform testing, onboarding resources, and leading them to deliver the test strategy that will fully test that the design is accurately implemented.

You will also be responsible for the processes/controls and reporting to ensure that testing meets agreed quality standards for operational acceptance and all relevant stakeholders have visibility of testing progress and System and User Acceptance Testing and Quality Assurance within ONS business departments.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

Communicating between the technical and non-technical

You can:

• listen to and interpret the needs of technical and non-technical stakeholders, and manage their expectations
• manage active and reactive communication
• support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders

Managing, reporting and resolving defects

You can:

• contribute to developing standards for defect management processes
• manage and escalate dependencies, defects, and risks across the team
• contribute to mitigation and contingency plans across teams
• use defect patterns and trends to make recommendations on testing and quality approaches, with support
• manage stakeholder expectations and communications during defect resolution

Test Analysis

You can:

• work with stakeholders to determine which functional and non-functional quality characteristics add value
• determine what to test following an agreed approach
• identify and advocate for test needs, such as data, access and environments, with support
• analyse information to identify risks

Test & Quality Planning

You can:

• work with teams to develop and implement appropriate quality testing approaches, plans and strategies
• contribute to organisational quality testing strategies
• implement ways to capture data to drive continuous improvement of quality testing approaches, plans and strategies
• advocate for full team ownership of quality testing activities, encouraging early engagement

Strategic Insight (Wider Business)

You have an awareness of:

• The need for organisational testing strategy and objectives and understands what testing the business area(s) are trying to complete
• How to align testing resource and activities across teams to assist decision making and action. Aware of how to align testing activities with objectives to create strategic insights that inform policy and proposition

Qualifications

ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level or equivalent, demonstrable experience as Test Manager/Senior Testing role.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace
• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,985, Office for National Statistics contributes £12,163 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Security Clearance

For ONS