Co-op program details

Software%20Quality%20Assurance%20and%20Test%20Engineering%20(Optional%20Co-op)

Program details

Credential: 1-Year Ontario College Graduate Certificate

This one-year comprehensive graduate certificate program is designed to deepen students' understanding of the testing paradigms, methodologies and tools utilized throughout the software development process.

Students develop a keen awareness of the characteristics of quality software from the perspective of an end user, a developer, and a business - that consistently lead to quality software. Emphasis is placed on how to create processes that most effectively and efficiently test the results of a software development project.

Graduates are well-prepared with experience and skills necessary to develop and test high quality computer applications for business in a variety of software development environments.

Student availability & wage data

Conestoga College facilitates recruitment on an ongoing basis - there are no hard deadlines. Typical time frames for work terms are listed below.

Postings are accepted beginning four months before the start of a term until all students have secured employment provided the minimum 12 consecutive weeks of full-time work is met.

Work/Study Sequence

Year Semester Semester Semester
Year 1 Classes Classes Work Term*: $16.55-29

*Note: students are available for work term each semester: fall (September to the end of December); winter (January to the end of April); spring (May to the end of August).

Conestoga College collects data on hourly wages of co-operative education students and offers suggested ranges as a service to employers for the purpose of establishing fair and competitive compensation.

Our experience has been that employers increase wages as skills increase, particularly when employing students for more advanced work terms. The Co-operative Education Office can provide assistance to employers in establishing appropriate wage rates.

Work term capabilities

  • Design software testing plans to evaluate functional and non-functional specification requirements for various test levels and types of information systems and technologies
  • Design and use test cases to verify system and individual component functionality, usability, and regression
  • Audit the quality assurance procedures to assess software quality and improve software performance
  • Create technical reports and documents such as testing plans, incident reports and technical specifications to document testing protocols
  • Collect, analyze, and document testing data for a variety of stakeholders
  • Manage software quality assurance and software testing projects according to current project management principles and practices
  • Create reliable software applications that have been thoroughly designed, documented and tested
  • Perform fully or semi-automated testing through the use of a wide variety of software testing tools
  • Perform testing on databases, database applications and database objects

Sample job titles

  • Software Test Specialist
  • Software Automated Test Developer
  • Software Test Engineer
  • Software Quality Assurance Engineer
  • Software Quality Assurance Analyst
  • Software Quality Assurance Specialist

Post a co-op job now

Setup an account or login to Conestoga's MyCareer to post a job.

Contact information

Do you need help developing a recruitment plan or job posting, accessing wage information, or connecting with a talented co-op student? Contact:

Darren Pearson
Employer Relations Consultant
Dpearson@conestogac.on.ca