Business Analyst & QA Lead (Remote, Continental United States)

ICA, Inc. is a growing company that supports federal agencies and government services organizations through research, data analysis, advanced data science, and strategic services. The Business Analyst & QA Lead will bridge business requirements and technical execution by managing requirements, leading QA strategy and testing, expanding automation, and supporting quality releases within an Agile/Scrum environment.

Responsibilities:

• Elicit, document, and manage business and functional requirements from stakeholders
• Translate requirements into user stories, acceptance criteria, and process flows
• Maintain requirement traceability from business need through to test coverage
• Facilitate requirement walkthroughs and sign-offs with stakeholders and dev teams
• Own the QA strategy for assigned products/features, from planning through release
• Design and document test plans, test cases, and test scripts based on requirements
• Lead manual and automated test execution across functional, regression, integration, and UAT cycles
• Track and report defects, drive triage, and ensure timely resolution with dev teams
• Define and monitor quality metrics (defect density, test coverage, escape rate, etc.)
• Act as the quality gatekeeper for release readiness
• Build and maintain automated test scripts (UI, API, and/or regression suites)
• Identify high-value automation candidates and continuously expand automation coverage
• Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines where applicable
• Evaluate and recommend automation tools/frameworks as needed
• Participate actively in sprint ceremonies (standups, planning, backlog grooming, retros, reviews)
• Write and refine user stories and acceptance criteria in the backlog
• Manage and maintain JIRA boards — epics, stories, sprints, workflows, and reporting
• Collaborate closely with Product Owners, Developers, and stakeholders to keep scope, timelines, and quality aligned

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in a related field
• 5+ years of experience in a combined BA/QA or QA Lead role
• Proven experience writing and managing requirements documentation and test cases
• Hands-on experience with test automation tools (e.g., Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, Postman/RestAssured, or similar)
• Strong working knowledge of Agile/Scrum methodology
• Advanced proficiency in JIRA (workflow configuration, dashboards, reporting) and Confluence (or equivalent)
• Experience managing full test lifecycle: planning, case design, execution, defect tracking, and reporting
• Strong analytical, communication, and stakeholder management skills
• Ability to lead QA activities independently and mentor team members
• Must be authorized to work in the United States and have lived in the US for 3 or more consecutive years
• Must be able and willing to obtain a Public Trust Clearance
• Experience with API testing and CI/CD integration (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, DevOps, etc.)
• Prior experience in federal, healthcare, AWS
• Familiarity with SQL for data validation is a plus