Posit creates great software that helps people understand data and make better decisions in real-world applications. Our core offering is an open source data science toolchain, and we aim to make it available to everyone, regardless of their economic means.

About the Role

Posit is seeking an experienced manager to coach the talented, dedicated Quality Assurance Engineers on the engineering team that builds our Posit Workbench professional product, as well as the open-source RStudio IDE. These products are designed to be installed in a customer’s own environment (cloud computing, bare metal servers, or desktop) and then used by data scientists to produce high-quality, code-based analysis to solve real-world problems. You will be leading both people and process from this position, with direct impact on the design and quality of Posit’s flagship products.

At Posit, QA engineers are embedded in the product development teams, so much of the work of this role is focused on enabling the QA engineers to drive the testing method on their product teams, and on sustaining a culture that focuses on good usability, supportability, and scalability in our software. You will be responsible for the well-being and performance of the QA engineers on the team, and for the strategy, method, processes, and tools used to validate the quality of the software products.

What you will own

• Provide strategic direction and career development resources to the QA engineers on your team
• Advocate for good development lifecycle hygiene on the product team, and giving team members the tools to participate, own, drive, and influence the outcomes of that lifecycle
• Gather and report on product quality data, and analyze the output of product teams to identify areas for improvement and enhancement
• Clear, cogent communication around the quality of our products to teammates and stakeholders
• Maintain an environment of psychological safety in which we can all do our best work
• Capacity planning, hiring, and onboarding new QA engineers as needed
• Design training programs to enable QA engineers to succeed in their daily tasks

What you will help with

• Develop and strengthen good QA methodology across the company
• Work closely with other Engineering leadership to set clear strategies and expectations for the quality of the software being built
• Plan and execute software releases and deployments that solve customers’ problems in the best possible way, in collaboration with team leaders in Product and Development
• Actively inspire and nurture user-centric, holistic, cross-product thinking in the QA organization
• Both high-level and day-to-day product team guidance, work prioritization, and release management with team leaders in Product and Development
• Promote knowledge sharing across product teams, and providing opportunities for QA engineers and others to spread information, reduce duplication, and streamline communication
• Evaluate tools and processes to optimize team operations
• Drive agreement and alignment across product teams
• Reinforce relationships with other teams at Posit

What you will teach us

• Best practices for integrating critical and constructive thinking into product planning and team ceremonies
• Effective methods for coaching and mentoring, to help senior engineers and leads guide their colleagues to success
• New quality philosophies, testing techniques, product management patterns. or tools. We are a team that likes to learn, and we are happy to learn about whatever expertise you have.

What you will learn

• Technologies we use that you don’t already know. While it is helpful to know them, we don't need you to come here knowing R or Python. We do need you to have test automation knowledge in some programming language, but the rest you will learn along the way.
• A deeper understanding of cloud infrastructure and DevOps methodologies to effectively deploy and test our software
• An appreciation for data science workflows and some of the tools and methodologies used by data scientists. Most of us do not come from a data science background but enjoy learning from those around us on this.
• The Posit products and how they empower our customers to do effective data science

Within one month, you will…

• Get to know everyone on the product team, and get familiar with our current software development and testing strategies and processes
• Follow our onboarding guide and suggest improvements
• Learn our product quality standards goals, and become familiar with our test planning, procedures, and frameworks
• Become familiar with the profiles and goals of our products’ two target personas: data scientists and system administrators
• Begin understanding how things fit together in the product, product suite, team, and company

Within three months, you will…

• Have a general understanding of our users’ objectives and how Posit Workbench, RStudio IDE, and the rest of our product suite helps them achieve those goals
• Become familiar with the product architecture, including major features and integration points
• Participate in product and feature planning and provide feedback
• Know the high-level design of our test plans, cases, and coverage, and be able to start thinking critically about our product quality strategy and measurement

Within six months, you will…

• Empower QA engineers to make the best decisions possible in the service of producing high-quality software
• Augment or start building tools to measure the level of product quality we have achieved; analyze the outcomes to identify areas for improvement
• Teach the team lessons from your previous experiences

Within a year, you will…

• Formulate strategies to ensure high-quality professional testing of our software products
• Work with product managers and engineering leaders to prioritize quality enhancements in both the products and our processes
• Provide career development resources; grow leadership and enable technical achievement across the team
• Plan for team capacity needs, then recruit and hire talented and collaborative new members of the QA team