Army Headquarters IAS - Lead Tester (ARMYHQ2/00195)

Tender description

Summary of the work The MOD requires a Technical Lead Test Consultant to head up a team of testers in order to support & test in-house Oracle Apex and .NET Applications. Specialist role Quality assurance analyst Expected Contract Length 220 days + option to extend 220 days Latest start date 31st March 2017 Maximum Day Rate £512.12 Early Market Engagement N/A Who Speclialist Work With The Specialist Company will be required to work with the Authority and other Suppliers to ensure coherent delivery of the services. The Specialist Company must have the necessary office facilities to support their own off-site working. It is anticipated that the Specialist Company will agree with the Authority to spend varying degrees of time located at the Authority’s site for face-to-face meetings and to carry out work of a security sensitive nature. What Specialists Work On 1. Installation, configuration and migration of the legacy test Windows / Oracle platform to the latest technologies / versions. 2. Installation of the Oracle Apex and .NET applications including regression and exploratory testing using HP ALM and TFS. 3. To perform administrative tasks and maintain all test servers using administrative tools e.g. VMware vRA. 4. To attend meetings with the authority and produce monthly test reporting metrics. 5. Provide expert technical advice and guidance around software quality and assurance processes. Skills & Experience • Must have recent experience in Red hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.x / Oracle 10g and 11g and regression / exploratory testing against Oracle Apex applications. • Must have Oracle DBA knowledge and recent experience in Oracle Apex applications. • Have previous experience at deploying CPU Patches and Operating System patches for both Windows and Linux platforms, including Service Packs. • To perform administrative tasks and maintain test environment using VMware vSphere Client 6.x and VMware vRealize Automation Tool 7.x. • Have strong DBA experience of SQL Server 2005, 2008 & 2012. • Knowledge of Windows Server 2012 R2 including Active Directory, SharePoint, IIS, Terminal Services/RDSH, WinSCP 5.x, Beyond Compare 3.x and Putty. • Experience in System Integration Testing and Continuous Integration (using Jenkins or TeamCity) against Oracle Apex Applications and .NET applications. • Competency and proven ability in the use of HP ALM 12.x & TFS for complete test management of requirements, test cases, execution of tests, defect tracking and reporting. • Competency and proven ability in writing and executing manual and automation test scripts/scenarios. • Ability to troubleshoot & fix issues and produce technical documentation. • Have experience writing test plans, test reports, test strategy and user guides. • Have experience working on both pre-production and production Linux and Windows platforms. • Excellent communication and co-ordination skills when conducting team meetings, presentations and demonstrations. • Must have HP ALM Administrative experience include migration from QC 10.x to ALM 11.x to ALM 12.x, ldap configuration, updating dbid.xml file. • Must have leadership skills and experience of providing technical advice and guidance to project teams. • Must have experience in scheduling testing activities to meet client objectives and priorities. • Experience in providing technical advice and guidance around test tool support agreements. Nice to Haves • Experience working within a secure defence environment. • Experiencing of working in an Agile DevOps delivery environment. • Must have previous experience and clear understanding of Agile Scrum / BDD Methodologies. • Automation testing experience using HP UFT/ Selenium Canopy / F#/ Specflow. Work Location The place of delivery of the contract shall be at such location as agreed between the Specialist Company and the Authority. Working Arrangments The Specialist company shall use its own initiative as to the manner in which services are to be delivered; for the avoidance of doubt, the Specialist Company shall not be supervised, directed or controlled regarding how the services are delivered. The Specialist Company shall use its own equipment where security requirements permit. The Specialist Company is expected to provide the services on such hours/days as required to meet any deadlines, as agreed between the Specialist Company and the Authority. The Specialist Company shall provide the necessary resources to support the Services which shall include one or more specialists. Security Clearance Security Clearance (SC) will be required for the duration of the role. Incumbents are to follow both the letter and spirit of Army Headquarters security regulations. Additional T&Cs These MOD DEFCONs form part of this Call Off Contract: 5J (Edn 18/11/16) Unique Identifiers 76 (Edn 12/06) Contractors on site 129J (Edn 18/11/16) Electronic business Delivery Form 516 (Edn 04/12) Equality 520 (Edn 18/11/16) Corrupt gifts and payments of commission 522 (Edn 18/11/16) Payment and Recovery of Sums Due 531 (Edn 11/14) Disclosure of Information 534 (Edn 18/11/16) Subcontracting and Prompt Payment 566 (Edn 07/14) Change of control contractor 642 (Edn 06/14) Progress meetings The following DEFFORMS will be used: 111 Appendix - Addresses And Other Information 10 Acceptance Of Offer Of Contract No. of Specialists to Evaluate 3 Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team within our organisation and other suppliers. • Transparent & collaborative when making decisions. • Has a no-blame culture and encourages people to learn from their mistakes. • Previous experience of working within a Defence environment Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 75% Cultural fit 5% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. re Knowledge of Windows Server 2012 R2 including Active Directory, SharePoint, IIS, Terminal Services/RDSH, WinSCP 5.x, Beyond Compare 3.x and Putty - would you consider a supplier who has used some but not all of these in a defence environment? We need to have all of these, otherwise MoD has to train the person in these skills at our time/cost. We have to Deliver products and services when and where the customer needs them.We need all of these skills they are not ‘nice to have’. 2. re: To perform administrative tasks and maintain test environment using VMware vSphere Client 6.x and VMware vRealize Automation Tool 7.x. would you consider a supplier who has used different applications to perform the same function in a Defence environment? Thank you The Tools/software listed is what we currently use and therefore are the business expectations, and the knowledge of these safeguards and adheres to current requirements for the duration of the contract. 3. What is the maximum number of resources whose skills and CVs we could submit for this role during the application submission Each supplier can submit no more than 1 candidate per job role. 4. What is the lead time for feedback following the application submission. The lead-time can take up to approximately 4 days. This allows us time to assess the applications and inform each supplier. 5. We are a specialist company, would you like us to provide evidence of the company's experience in the skills required, or evidence pertaining to a single specialist resource? Please can you only submit details of the candidate you wish to put forward for the role 6. What is the IR35 status? Having applied the HMRC online employment status assessment tool, the working practices of this engagement are shown to fall outside the scope of the intermediaries legislation (IR35). 7. Where is the location? Army Headquarters - Andover 8. Is there any scope for increasing the offered daily rate as this is a very low market rate for the expertise and skills requested? It is has been agreed that the rate currently advertised is appropriate to the role 9. Is there a current incumbent within the role This requirement is currently being fulfilled under a Contract due to expire