Quality Assurance Manager
Founded by the creator of the YOU DON'T KNOW JACK® game series, The Jellyvision Lab, Inc. creates virtual teachers, advisors, and salespeople who make online learning and decision making delightful. In all that we do, our goal is to make complex topics simple and boring material interesting, using a combination of great design, unexpectedly funny content, and serious technology.
Of all the virtual people Jellyvision has created, the tallest and least afraid of bears is ALEX® (www.meetalex.com). ALEX helps companies talk their employees through the tricky choices they’ll have to make, like picking a health insurance plan, deciding how much to put in the 401(k), or whether they might want extra life insurance. Our customers love ALEX because he helps their employees figure out what’s best for their personal situations, which, in turn, saves our customers a boat-load of time and money - everybody wins! As we sell more and more of ALEX, we need more and more non-virtual (i.e., real life) people to keep the virtual ones amazing. That’s where you come in.
SO WHAT'S THIS JOB ABOUT?
We are looking for a QA Manager to organize and lead QA efforts for our Services group. If you’re the bug-buster for us, you're a bright, detail-oriented, all around lovely person ready to help us accomplish the following:
- Ensure quality and deliver defect-free projects
- Manage the planning and execution of testing efforts
- Work closely with project managers on scheduling and priorities
- Resource management for all testing efforts
- Maintain relationships and hire new vendors & contractors as needed
- Train new testers and provide ongoing training for QA Analysts
- Collaborate with the production team to understand project requirements
- Create test strategies based on project specifications
- Work with the production team and infrastructure team on project launches and back end deployments
- Identify process improvements and integrate QA into all steps of production process
- Continually evaluate support specifications and make recommendations based on market share research and user statistics
- Device & testing tools research and management
WHAT KIND OF SKILLS SHOULD I HAVE?
- Communication – You should be a great communicator, both in writing and in faces. You make sure your team and other teams are clear on expectations and next steps.
- Organization – You’ll need to be organized and flexible. Schedules and priorities will shift frequently, and you need to be able to adapt and shift resources as needed. You’ll be managing many resources across several projects simultaneously, so (metaphorical) juggling is a must. Actual juggling skills optional.
- Time management skills - You need to be able to keep yourself and a whole team of people balanced and organized, while delivering great work in the process. You must be an assertive, resourceful, and creativeproblem solver.
- Leadership – You’ve managed and have experience leading teams. You understand the big picture and will provide direction and delegate, but can also get into the fine details when needed.
AND WHAT KINDS OF EXPERIENCE SHOULD YOU HAVE?
We are looking for someone with 3-5 years of related experience. But in terms of ideal backgrounds, that related experience should include:
- QA Experience – You’ll have a solid understanding of QA and testing processes, procedures and tools. You’ve worked with teams to understand project and technical requirements and have created test strategies or test plans to meet those requirements.
- Management – You’ll have experience managing schedules and resources across multiple teams and/or initiatives. You understand how to balance client requirements and the goals of a project against timeline and budget realities.
- Technical Expertise – You’ve worked with testing tools, iOS, Android, and many different operating systems and browsers. Experience with Flash, HTML, API’s, and databases are a plus.
ANYTHING ELSE?
Yes. We share a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere, so we hire nice, bright, funny people who are willing to work hard. Our credo is a simple one: be helpful. And we believe we can be most helpful if our workforce is as diverse in thought, perspective, and culture as the people who use our products. We are looking to add amazing folks to our team who will bring diversity across many lines, including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity, sex, and country of origin.
ARE THERE ANY PERKS? Yes, we love perks.
- Competitive pay, stock options and benefits. 401(k) with matching. And we pay 100% of the cost of premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance for our employees (as long as you qualify for our tobacco-free discount; if you’re a tobacco user, your medical premiums will be higher than $0). We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental and vision insurance.
- Casual dress and a flexible schedule. Come in a sweatshirt, jeans, whatever, like everyone else here.
- Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of intelligent, talented and innovative folks. Although most hours the place is deathly quiet (we're a focused bunch), this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment, which makes a nice way to spend the day.
- Free food. Every week, we stock our kitchen with free healthy snack foods, and we have a “hot lunch” catered once a week to give people a reason to hang out and eat together.
- Easy transportation. We’re really close to the 'L' and the Halsted (#8) bus (right by the Apple Store and Mega Whole Foods too), and we have a transit FSA that allows you to dedicate pre-tax dollars to public transportation expenses. And a number of our employees like to bike to work, so we also have showers and lockers in the office.
- Did we mention our yoga class? We bring a pro instructor right to the office. Fully subsidized by Jellyvision and fully optional, btw.
- Oh! And we have a massage chair. Not just any massage chair, my friend. It’s the HumanTouch HT 5320 WholeBody™ Massage Chair. Feeling a little stiff? Sit down. Relax. Feel better? Good. Okay, back to work.
INTERESTED? Great, we look forward to reading your application - make sure it includes:
- A cover letter that highlights three reasons you think you’d be great for the gig, focusing on how your past work experience has prepared you for this kind of position – or why you think you can rock the job even though you don’t have past work experience that’s perfectly aligned. Writing is key to all that we do, and we weigh cover letters heavily.
- Your resume.
You will receive an auto-reply confirming that we've received your application.
If you decide to apply, please know that every complete application will be carefully reviewed. Seriously! We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application. And we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us awhile to get back to applicants, so please NO PHONE CALLS. The time we spend responding to phone calls and emails inquiring about where we are in the process is time that we could be spending actually moving the process along – so please be patient with us!
Thanks for your interest in Jellyvision!