Test Automation Engineer

About Us:

Validaide B.V. is a SaaS company based in the Netherlands serving global pharmaceutical manufacturers and forwarders. Our platform is the world’s global platform for the digitization of so-called Lane Risk Assessments which help our customers ensure compliance with Good Distribution Practice (GDP). Validaide is also a data-sharing platform used by over 1600 logistics companies globally (e.g. Lufthansa, Qatar) to define and share information about their pharma handling capabilities. Validaide is developed in PHP using the Symfony framework with a MySQL database. The organization embraces the Agile mindset and way of working and with regards to software development we have embedded compliance activities into our Agile process to meet customer requirements in that area.

Job Summary:

We are looking for a full-time skilled Test Automation Engineer to join our team, with expertise in Functional Acceptance Testing (FAT) using Behat and PHP. This role focuses on designing, implementing, and managing automated and performant tests to ensure robust validation of software functionality, compliance, and security.

As the Validaide platform is used in a GxP environment, the software and our processes must comply with regulations such as GAMP, FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and EU GMP Annex 11. You will be expected to familiarise yourself with those regulations and ensure compliance. Furthermore you will be involved in developing a User Requirements Specifications (URS) and related Traceability Matrix (TM) to ensure traceability and coverage. You will be expected to obtain a deep understanding of the Validaide software. You will join a team currently consisting of one full-time Test Automation Engineer and a Test Automation Trainee.

We’re a 20-person company, and our agile development team currently consist of seven members with varying levels of experience, including a dedicated test automation engineer. Our mindset towards development is this: we want to optimize our development speed whilst maintaining software quality and reliability. We achieve this with the following mantras: “good over perfect”, “don’t introduce a technology unless it is really needed”, “pragmatic DRY”, “don’t DIY if there are fantastic tools that DIFY (e.g. rector)”, “sometimes you got to write stuff down, dummy (Wiki, e-QMS)”, “integration/smoke tests over unit tests”, “be a {boy/girl/other}scout“, “Bug? Write a test!”, and many more!

A Typical Day:

On a typical day we start with the Daily Standup at 9. On Tuesday’s we do this physically with a mug of coffee or tea in our hands when we are all in the office in Utrecht. During the DS, you bring up a set of 15 automated tests in our test suite that keep on failing randomly. Once we completed our round, you move into a detailed refinement session with our Product Owner and some selected team members. While we refine, you identify a list of tests that need updating or creating for several stories, as well as highlight the need for an update to our software validation plan. After lunch in the office canteen, you move to the priority of the day, which is to analyse and fix those intermittent failures. You do this by partnering with a developer and analysing the cause for the failures. By working together, you quickly identify the issue and stabilize the test suite. The rest of the day is focused on writing new Behat tests for a new feature, and in alignment with your colleagues decide to introduce one new manual test to the release validation activities which is too much work to automate now.

Key Responsibilities:

• Automated Test Development : Design, develop, and maintain automated tests in Behat.
• Agile Team Participation : Proactively participate in the Agile team, contributing to optimizing quality and productivity throughout the development lifecycle.
• Manual Testing : Perform manual testing as needed in a scalable approach to complement automated efforts, ensuring thorough validation of requirements.
• Test Environments : Set up and manage test environments using Behat, Chrome, Selenium and related tools.
• CI/CD Integration : Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Jenkins.
• Documentation : Document testing strategies, processes, guidelines, standards and results to support compliance audits and quality assurance.
• Test Management : Pro-actively manage tests using existing test management tooling or by introducing new tooling to ensure existing and new tests are well structured and maintained.
• Bug Management : Align with internal stakeholders in analyzing newly reported bugs, and documenting this accordingly.
• Internal Alignment: You partake in regular internal alignment sessions with the Customer Success and Support teams on e.g. bug prioritization.
• Release Management : You participate in the release management activities, which include pre-and-post-release validation activities.
• User Requirements Specification : Collaborate with stakeholders to understand and help document User Requirements Specifications (URS) and translate them into testable acceptance criteria.
• Traceability Matrix : Develop and maintain a Traceability Matrix to ensure comprehensive traceability from requirements to test cases and results.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Proven experience in test automation, in particular Behat (Gherkin).
• Solid programming skills in PHP.
• Relevant certifications such as Certified Agile Tester, Certified Test Automation Engineer, ISTQB, or CSTP.
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions and/or Jenkins.
• Experience with manual testing and Test Management tools and/or Requirements Management tools.
• Experience working with User Requirements Specifications (URS) and maintaining a Traceability Matrix or similar.
• Team player, with excellent communication and soft skills.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities.
• Fluent in English; Dutch language skills are a bonus.

Nice-to-have:

• Familiarity with software compliance frameworks (e.g. GAMP, FDA 21 CFR Part 11).
• Knowledge in security software testing or performance testing.
• Experience with other testing frameworks.
• Experience with other programming languages, such as JAVA

What We Offer:

• Startup mindset, flat hierarchy, cooperative and supportive mentality.
• Hybrid work environment with 2 days in the office in Utrecht, rest work-from-home.
• Diverse, international team (Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey).
• Competitive salary depending on current skillset + company bonus.
• Pension + expenses (home office, travel) + training budget.
• We plant trees on your behalf to compensate CO2 using Ecologi: Most of us are a 'digital nomad' from time to time, e.g. visiting one's home country.