3989 Assurance Engineer

• Organizational Standards
• Test Documentation
• Review and Assessment

Duties & Role:

• Plans, organizes, and conducts formal reviews and assessments across complex, cross-functional, and supply-chain domains.
• Evaluates and identifies non-compliances with organizational standards and determines root causes.
• Produces test documentation: (Event) Test Plans, Test Cases, Requirements Traceability Matrix, test reports.
• Provides assurance over test artifacts such as the Requirements Traceability Matrix.
• Manages the design, planning, and execution of V&V events and associated reporting.
• Supports projects executed by external contractors, acting as independent verifier.
• Supports the operational community during operational acceptance activities.

Requirements

Skills, Knowledge & Experience:

• The candidate must have a currently active NATO SECRET security clearance
• Ownership of V&V planning and execution on large, complex projects (5+ years, recent). Candidates must be able to describe in their application, in detail, at least two large or complex programmes where they authored or led the Master Test Plan / Event Test Plan and directed execution — not merely contributed test cases under someone else's plan. Be ready to discuss specific trade-offs made if selected for the interview (e.g., risk-based test prioritization, scope cuts under schedule pressure).
• Functional, non-functional, and interoperability testing (3+ years, recent). Candidates should be able to walk through a specific non-functional test campaign (e.g., performance, security, interoperability) they designed and executed, including how pass/fail criteria were defined and what was found.
• Managing external stakeholders and co-workers on large, complex projects. Candidates must provide a concrete example of a disagreement or escalation with an external stakeholder (vendor, contractor, or sponsor) during test execution, and how it was resolved.
• Ability to read and reason about hardware/software system architectures from design documentation. Assessed via a short architecture-reading exercise during the interview (e.g., reviewing a redacted system design excerpt and identifying testable risk areas).
• Clear, concise, engaging communication — oral and written. Assessed directly through the interview and through a short-written exercise (e.g., drafting an executive summary of a fictitious non-compliance finding).
• Team leadership experience (testers, quality, or development engineers). Candidates must specify in their application team size, their role (technical lead vs. line manager vs. project lead), and one example of a performance or resourcing decision they made.
• Testing in virtualized and cloud environments. Candidates should in their application name the specific platforms/environments used (e.g., VMware, AWS, Azure, on-prem virtualization) and describe one testing challenge unique to that environment.
• Familiarity with test management, defect management, and requirements management tools. Name your organization's actual toolset here (e.g., Jira/Zephyr, HP ALM, DOORS, Azure, TestRail....). Candidates should describe in their application how they used the tool to manage traceability or defects on a real project.
• Independent testing of externally-contracted work. Candidates must describe in their application a case where they served as an independent verifier of work performed by an external party, including how independence was maintained and how findings were reported.

Desirable Experience and Education:

• Advanced testing/test management certification (e.g., ISTQB Advanced/Expert level, or equivalent)
• Experience testing within the NATO/military business domain
• Experience with assurance tools and processes (e.g., audit frameworks, compliance assessments)
• Experience as an interoperability tester within a NATO context