Quality Assurance Analyst

Quality Assurance / SDET

As a Quality Assurance / SDET, you will play a critical role in delivering high-quality software solutions to our clients by ensuring testing excellence across complex initiatives. You will be aligned to a business-unit delivery team and partner closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, and Developers to define, execute, and continuously improve testing strategies.

This role balances hands-on testing with test planning, automation, reporting, and quality advocacy. You will contribute across multiple initiatives, applying risk-based thinking and strong technical skills to help ensure our solutions are reliable, scalable, and production-ready.

This QA Analyst role supports our Corporate Resource Groups and requires a hybrid work environment. Baird is not currently hiring individuals for this position who now or in the future require sponsorship for employment visa status.

The Impact You'll Make:

• Develop and implement effective, risk-based testing strategies across multiple projects, ensuring appropriate coverage, traceability, and quality outcomes
• Drive the testing lifecycle from business scope through deployment and production release within an agile delivery model
• Design, create, and execute comprehensive test plans, test cases, test scripts, and test data, including functional, integration, regression, data integrity, and stress testing
• Evaluate opportunities for test automation and performance testing, recommending appropriate tools, approaches, and frameworks
• Design, develop, execute, and maintain automated test scripts, while analyzing test results and identifying root causes of failures
• Review business requirements, technical designs, and acceptance criteria to identify gaps, risks, and testability concerns early in the delivery process
• Identify, document, communicate, and track defects from discovery through resolution, ensuring clear reproduction steps and impact analysis
• Develop and manage QA metrics and reporting to monitor quality trends, surface risks, and drive continuous improvement
• Coordinate test environments, test data creation, and build promotions in partnership with project and delivery teams
• Participate in agile ceremonies, design reviews, and backlog refinement, advocating for quality practices and influencing delivery decisions
• Educate and mentor on testing approaches, tools, and quality standards
• Contribute to the evolution of QA processes, tools, automation practices, and continuous improvement initiatives across the portfolio

What You'll Bring to Baird:

• A minimum of five (5) years of prior IT or business-related experience, including at least three to five (3–5) years of Quality Assurance, Test Automation, or Software Development experience
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, MIS, Business Administration, Finance, or a related field preferred
• Strong ability to decompose business and technical requirements into detailed, effective test cases for functional, regression, and integration testing
• Demonstrated knowledge of software testing types and methodologies, including black-box, white-box, gray-box, regression, negative, system, and unit testing
• Experience working within agile delivery frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, Lean) and executing testing activities within short iteration cycles
• Hands-on experience testing APIs and data integrations, with a strong understanding of how data flows across systems
• Demonstrated experience with automated UI and API testing tools and monitors (e.g., Playwright, Selenium, ThunderClient, SOAPUI, Dynatrace, Azure alerts, or similar), with the ability to identify and implement automation opportunities
• Strong SQL skills, including the ability to write queries to validate data integrity, transformations, and reporting accuracy across large data sets
• Experience with defect tracking, QA metrics, and reporting, with a focus on driving quality improvements
• Familiarity with test management tools such as Microsoft Test Manager, Quality Center, Azure DevOps, or similar platforms preferred
• Working knowledge of common web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, REST APIs)
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with both technical and business stakeholders
• Proven ability to adapt to changing priorities, manage multiple initiatives, and identify quality risks in complex environments
• Experience partnering with Business Analysts, Product Owners, and Developers to review requirements, identify risks, and promote quality best practices