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We are thrilled to be seeking two standout Test Engineers for our award-winning Technology Department!
Despite being notorious within the Staycation sphere, behind this, we stand as one of the fastest-growing Tech businesses in the North West!
With over 120 tech superstars across our team, we truly are the best and brightest, who eat, sleep and breathe tech and are united in nurturing our rich culture of innovation, discovering new ways of doing things and our newest Tester will be an ongoing driving force in our quest to become a data driven business and best in the 'biz for what we do!
Job Description
We are welcoming those with standout skills in Test Driven Development, solid understanding of automation concepts and experience creating, maintaining and running automated tests to help us craft quality services and solutions that maximise business value and transform our processes and practices to compete in a fast moving market place!
We are a team with big ambitions to achieve our goal of TDD and our newest Tester will be crucial in maintaining an automated regression test suite (using PHP) to cover the most common user journeys as well as the ones with the highest business value!
Working collaboratively with the our talented Developers to perform exploratory manual testing both on individual tickets and on a project basis, you will be key in highlighting when a particular user journey should be automated and implementing this successfully!
Your Responsibilities
We are looking for those who can share in our vision!
We pride ourselves on our ethos of innovation which we drive into our award-winning, transformative projects across our Technology team. Working in our wider Testing Team, you will from day one and will be a key player which will see you:
- Promotion of best practice for TDD and contribution to process improvement whenever possible.
- Take pride and responsibility of the work delivered, anticipating potential issues and being solution driven.
- Contributing and working collaboratively with developers and other team members to ensure that high quality solutions are delivered to meet business objectives.
- Representing the test role at key project meetings, including planning, demonstrations, negotiating with stakeholders and developers, and communicating effectively at an appropriate technical level with the rest of the business
- Designing and creation of well crafted, resilient automated test suites.
- Performing structured mission-based exploratory test sessions.
- Knowledge sharing e.g. coaching, mentoring other team members
Skills and Qualifications
We know what kind of people we want in our team and our next Tester will be should be someone who shares in our passion for innovation, who can hit the ground running sharing their expertise and drive forward our culture of progression and forward thinking! All we ask is you have the following:
- Experience of testing in a TDD environment e.g. pairing with devs to collaborate on test design
- ‘Test first’ mentality, and the willingness to champion testing throughout the SDLC
- Solid understanding of automation concepts i.e. what should/shouldn’t be automated and a desire to expedite repetitive tasks using an appropriate automated solution
- Experience of creating, maintaining and running of automation tests
- Experience of building a test automation framework
- Good working knowledge of at least one programming language e.g. Java, PHP
- Good understanding of REST APIs and their concepts e.g. HTTP methods & response codes
- Solid understanding of manual test principles including Exploratory Testing and Session Based Test Management
- Basic knowledge of SQL
- Excellent organisational, planning and prioritisation skills
...although standouts will also have:
- Ability to write tests using PHP
- Working knowledge of Git, Continuous Integration, & Agile methodologies
- Exposure to tech such as Docker, AWS, React and Laravel, PHPUnit
- Working knowledge and experience of performance testing
- ISTQB Foundation Certificate
This is a fantastic opportunity to leap into your latest career challenge, applying your technical skills and sharing your knowledge as a vital part of our Team - If you think you can make this role your own, we want to hear from you!
Benefits
- Paying a salary circa £25,500 per annum
- Plus access to our annual STIP (annual company-wide bonus) scheme with an additional 5% of your salary
- 33 days annual leave including bank holidays
- Plus an additional day off for your Birthday
- Plus an additional two volunteering days per year
- A flexible hybrid-working policy
- An enhanced maternity and paternity policy
- Un-rivalled personal development
- Study support for additional qualifications, courses and accreditations
- Numerous dedicated wellbeing initiatives
- On-site gym at our Chester HQ
- Regular social events including our infamous bring your dog to work day!
- Unique company culture within one of our most innovative, dynamic teams!
Who we are
Sykes Holiday Cottages is a business with big dreams and bursting with ambition. We have pinned our sights on becoming the UK's number one holiday rental agency and will stop at nothing to reach our goal, combining our 27+ years of industry experience with our fierce company drive to become the best in the market for what we do.
What started as a small family run company has now grown to be a 900 strong workforce of ambitious, passionate professionals spread across the UK, Ireland and New Zealand at a growing number of Regional Sister Brands and at our Chester head office.
Despite our success, our people and culture are what sets us apart from other businesses and has helped us earn our title as one of the Sunday Times’ ‘Best Companies to Work For’ for two years consecutive years. Our unique culture has remained intact since day one of our journey and is ingrained heavily in each and every one of our employees.
We are truly proud of our five Company Values which are the foundations of every aspect of our business and remain at the heart of everything we do despite our rapid growth. By Achieving Together, Communicating Honestly, Growing and Learning, Earning Trust and Driving Innovation and Change, we remain true to our original ethos and ensure we stay true to our Customers, Owners and Colleagues alike.
Diversity and Inclusion
Here at the Sykes Cottages Family, we encourage and welcome our people to bring their authentic and best selves to work every day. We know the power that comes from different ideas, backgrounds and perspectives.
We recognise the role diversity plays in achieving our goals as a business. We actively welcome applications from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible. If you need any particular support or accommodations as part of your application process, please get in touch - our recruitment team are happy to help.
Hybrid Working
We are proud to support hybrid-working across the business, with a mixture or remote and office working available. This will be discussed during your interview.
