IT Quality Assurance Lead at African Leadership University (ALU)

The Quality Assurance (QA) Lead will play a critical role in ensuring the reliability, performance and integrity of ALU’s enterprise systems with a primary focus on the Student Information System (SIS) and its integrations with other Corporate platforms. All changes across SIS and corporate systems should adhere to ALU’s stability, replicability and governance standards.This role is both strategic and hands-on: you will design and implement an automated testing framework, develop manual and automated test scripts tied to user stories, conduct regression and integration testing and ensure seamless collaboration between developers, analysts and business owners. The ideal candidate is detail-oriented, methodical and passionate about building high-quality systems that enhance user experience and institutional performance.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

QA Strategy & Governance

• Define and implement QA standards, processes and automation frameworks across all SIS and corporate systems.
• Establish a test management strategy that covers functional, integration, regression and user acceptance testing (UAT).
• Ensure test coverage aligns with user stories, acceptance criteria and system requirements.
• Maintain a central QA documentation repository, including test cases, scripts and defect logs.

Test Planning & Execution

• Reduce production defects by implementing proactive testing gates and enforcing test readiness criteria before deployment.
• Design, develop and execute test cases (manual and automated) for new features, integrations and releases.
• Conduct end-to-end testing of SIS workflows; particularly points of integration with Finance (e.g., student billing, refunds, payments, reconciliations).
• Perform regression testing to ensure new changes do not break existing functionality.
• Track and manage defects through the full lifecycle from discovery to resolution.
• Own the final QA sign-off for releases and ensure readiness criteria are met before deployment.
• Incorporate basic security testing and collaborate with the Cybersecurity team to ensure vulnerabilities are identified early.

Automation & Tools Implementation

• Implement and maintain appropriate automated testing tools (e.g., Selenium, Provar, Playwright, TestComplete, or similar).
• Develop reusable automated test scripts and data sets to improve efficiency and coverage.
• Integrate automated testing with the CI/CD pipeline where applicable.
• Monitor test automation results and generate clear reports for stakeholders.

Collaboration & Continuous Improvement

• Work closely with developers and business analysts to clarify requirements, acceptance criteria, and test readiness.
• Partner with data and system integration teams to validate data accuracy between SIS, Finance and other corporate platforms.
• Support UAT by coordinating testing with end users and providing structured feedback mechanisms.
• Identify recurring issues, propose process improvements, and advocate for quality-first development practices.

Reporting & Metrics

• Produce regular QA reports summarizing defects, testing progress, release readiness and quality trends. The following KPI’s indicate success: 95% of defects discovered before production;
• 90% automation coverage of critical SIS workflows and 100% of releases pass QA readiness gates
• Maintain testing dashboards for visibility across the Transformation Office.
• Provide post-release reviews and feedback loops to improve future testing cycles.
• Ensure the safety and well-being of all young persons and vulnerable adults with whom we deal,  by adhering to ALCHE’s comprehensive safeguarding policy, maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to any violations of safeguarding standards.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years’ experience in software quality assurance
• Strong hands-on experience with both manual and automated testing methodologies.
• Proficiency with automated testing tools such as Selenium, Provar or equivalent.
• Solid understanding of software development life cycle (SDLC), Agile methodologies, and test management tools (e.g., Jira, AzureDevops).
• Demonstrated experience testing integrated enterprise systems, preferably Student Information Systems, ERP or CRM systems
• Strong SQL skills for data validation and backend testing.
• Excellent analytical, documentation and communication skills.