QA Engineer at Sanlam Group

What will you do?

• Sanlam Life and Savings (SLS) offers retail and corporate life insurance and investment products in South Africa. This cluster provides clients across different market segments (entry-level, middle-income, affluent, professional market, business owners and corporates) with a comprehensive range of appropriate and competitive financial solutions.
• These include traditional life insurance risk and savings products, investment, retirement, health, and fiduciary services. Designed to facilitate long-term wealth creation, protection and niche financing, these solutions are engineered around client needs. 
• As we Live in Confidence™ we believe in creating and cultivating a positive, energised working environment that gives you every opportunity to achieve success. Sanlam is committed to transformation and embracing diversity.
• This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse workplace with employment equity as a key goal to create an inclusive workforce, representative of the demographics of our society as well as people with disabilities.

Job Purpose

• The QA Analyst is responsible for validating the quality, reliability, and business correctness of solutions delivered across Sanlam’s Dynamics 365 ecosystem and integrated platforms. The role focuses on thorough functional, integration, and end‑to‑end testing, ensuring that business processes work as intended across legacy and modern systems.
• As part of Sanlam’s shift toward Quality Engineering, the QA Analyst contributes to automation‑first and AI‑assisted testing practices by identifying high‑value automation opportunities, supporting automated test execution, and applying quality standards consistently. The role works independently of development to provide objective quality insight while collaborating closely with Developers, Functional Consultants, and Product teams.

What will make you successful in this role?

Role Requirements:

Output/Core Tasks:

Test Planning & Analysis

• Analyse business requirements, user stories, and technical specifications to design comprehensive test scenarios and test cases.
• Identify test dependencies across legacy systems, APIs, integration layers, and new platforms.
• Participate in backlog refinement, sprint planning, and release readiness activities as part of Agile delivery.

Test Execution

• Execute functional, regression, system, integration, and user acceptance tests.
• Validate data accuracy, business rules, and process flows across multiple systems.
• Log, track, and retest defects using test and defect management tools.
• Ensure traceability from requirements to test cases, results, and defect resolution.

Contribution to Automation & Autonomous Testing

• Collaborate with QA Engineers and Developers to build, enhance, and maintain automated test suites (e.g., UI, API, regression packs).
• Identify manual test cases with high repeatability or complexity for automation opportunities.
• Participate in the adoption of AI assisted testing, self healing tests, test optimisation, and shift left practices.
• Provide feedback on automation frameworks and help ensure test environments are ready for automated execution.
• Apply practical automation skills to design or maintain automated test cases using one or more frameworks (e.g., Playwright, REST Assured, Selenium).
• Develop foundational capability in agentic testing models, including understanding goal‑driven AI test execution approaches.
• Critically evaluate the outputs of AI‑generated or AI‑executed tests and use prompt‑engineering techniques to accelerate and improve test scenario generation.

Quality Engineering & Continuous Improvement

• Support continuous integration and deployment pipelines by contributing to quality gates and automated checks.
• Develop and maintain test documentation, test data sets, and QA artefacts.
• Identify and escalate risks related to system stability, data issues, or product quality.
• Contribute to improving testing standards, templates, QA processes, and quality metrics across the team.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Work closely with Business Analysts, Developers, Product Owners, Release Managers, and Architects.
• Support business users during UAT and ensure issues are clearly articulated and resolved.
• Communicate test results, defects, and risks in a clear and timely manner.
• Build strong working knowledge of core Sanlam platforms, legacy systems, and integration points.

Experience and Qualifications

Experience

Essential Experience

• 3–5+ years of experience in testing across complex enterprise systems.
• Demonstrated experience testing both legacy and modern applications, including APIs, UI, and backend systems.
• Experience with test management and defect tracking tools (e.g., Azure DevOps, JIRA, XRay, TestRail).
• Working knowledge of SQL for data validation.
• Experience participating in Agile delivery teams (Scrum/Kanban).
• Exposure to automation concepts, frameworks, and scripting (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, REST Assured).

Advantageous / Preferred

• Experience in financial services, insurance, or highly regulated environments.
• Exposure to autonomous or AI enabled testing technologies (self-healing tests, generative test creation).
• Experience in API testing tools such as Postman, SoapUI, or Karate.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
• Awareness of performance testing as a discipline and the ability to contribute performance test scenarios.
• Familiarity with Cloud based environments or microservices testing.

Qualifications

Essential

• Matric / Grade 12.
• Diploma or degree in Information Technology, Software Testing, Computer Science, or related field (or equivalent experience).

Preferred

• ISTQB Foundation certification.
• ISTQB Agile or Test Automation certifications.
• Additional certifications in QA tools, automation testing, or cloud technology.

Competencies

Technical Competencies

• Manual Testing (functional, regression, integration, UAT).
• API testing and validation.
• SQL and data validation skills.
• Understanding automation frameworks and CI/CD processes.
• Requirements analysis and test design.
• Understanding of system architecture and integration.
• Ability to work across legacy and modern systems.
• Familiarity with Autonomous Testing concepts.

Behavioural Competencies

• Critical Thinking – ability to identify gaps, inconsistencies, and system issues.
• Adaptability – comfortable working with evolving tools and technologies.
• Detail Orientation – strong focus on accuracy, completeness, and traceability.
• Collaboration – builds strong relationships with cross functional teams.
• Communication – clear, concise articulation of issues and test outcomes.
• Proactiveness – anticipates issues and contributes ideas to improve quality.
• Resilience & Persistence – able to work through complex defects and ambiguity.