Senior QA Engineer (Azure DevOps Test Plans, API + Data Validation)

About the role
You’ll validate functional quality and ensure requirements are met before staging/production release, enforcing structured test processes, traceability (RTM), and disciplined validation cycles. You have authority to block releases when acceptance criteria are not met.

What you’ll do

• Review requirements/user stories/acceptance criteria; design test cases (positive/negative/boundary/edge); maintain ADO Test Plans + RTM 
• Execute functional/regression/integration cycles; validate acceptance criteria; exploratory + smoke testing before release 
• Log reproducible defects with evidence; track lifecycle; verify fixes; analyze root-cause trends 
• Maintain/expand regression suite based on defect trends; revalidate impacted modules during updates 
• API testing (Postman) + validate request/response/error handling; basic SQL queries for backend data validation 
• Validate basic OWASP scenarios and access-control testing; support pre-prod validation checks 
• Participate in Go/No-Go; provide formal QA sign-off; block release for critical/high-severity defects 

Must-have

• 5+ years QA/testing; enterprise applications; Agile/Scrum; structured test management tools 
• Test case design/execution, regression management, acceptance criteria validation, RTM discipline 
• API testing (Postman) + basic SQL (SELECT/JOIN/filters) + data validation techniques 
• ADO/TFS/Jira defect lifecycle; severity/priority classification; trend analysis 
• Awareness: SDLC stages, ADO Test Plans, basic OWASP Top 10, basic CI/CD understanding 

Authority / constraints

• Can block releases; can reject unclear requirements for testing; cannot change scope/logic or override architecture/security standards 

Nice-to-have certs

• ISTQB Foundation; AZ-900 recommended; OWASP awareness training