Senior Software Tester

Description The Western Cape Department of Health is looking for a highly skilled Senior / Lead Automation Tester to join a highly motivated engineering team at the Provincial Health Data Centre (PHDC). This role requires an experienced professional who is both technically hands-on and capable of leading, coordinating, and mentoring junior testers. The successful person will take full ownership of their deliverables as well as the team’s output, ensuring a high standard of quality across all testing initiatives. Core Responsibilities Lead Test Strategy & Planning: Collaborate with stakeholders to define testing scopes, objectives, and robust test strategies. Lead Test Automation: Design, build, and maintain scalable automated testing frameworks (using Playwright). Execution & Defect Tracking: Perform functional, integration, regression, and API testing. Log, track, and reproduce defects using tools like Jira or Azure DevOps. Required to lead the Testing effort. Skill to Introduce and adopt processes Streamline work Coordinate work with the software team Environment & Data Validation: Work with databases and CI/CD pipelines to validate backend data integrity and support continuous deployment. Mentorship: Guide junior testers, review test scripts, and drive continuous quality improvement across the team. Requirements Requirements & Experience Experience: 5 to 7+ years of professional software testing experience, often with a mix of manual and automated testing. Technical Skills and Certifications: Tertiary qualifications and/or applicable training in application programming courses and/or International Software Testing Qualifications. Experience with MS SQL Server and data access methods, SQL, and extensive work done on Database Technologies (MS SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL) – including familiarity with Stored Procedures. Methodologies: Strong experience working within Agile/Scrum and DevOps delivery cycles. Good written and verbal communication skills The Team The current team is made up of experienced software developers, analysts, data scientists and database engineers who operate in an agile environment, implementing continuous automation, integrated unit testing and agile processes.