The Role
As Senior QA Automation Engineer, you will be embedded within one of our product councils as the dedicated quality expert, typically for a year-long engagement. You will work across the full product lifecycle, from refinement sessions through to delivery, bringing quality thinking in early rather than bolting it on at the end.
Alongside your council work, you will play a significant role in shaping our wider QA function. That means evolving our automation frameworks, mentoring engineers, championing better practices, and contributing strategic input that influences how the whole team operates.
This is a senior individual contributor role with real autonomy and visibility. You will be trusted to identify what needs doing and get on with it, whilst also knowing when to bring others along with you.
Main Responsibilities
Quality leadership and strategy
- Partner with QA leadership to help shape strategy, standards, and direction across the function
- Lead initiatives to improve our TypeScript/Cypress (web) and Java/Appium (mobile) automation frameworks
- Identify and drive adoption of new testing approaches, tools, and methodologies
- Establish and evolve testing standards across the QA team
- Mentor QA engineers, helping them grow both their technical and strategic skills
- Champion continuous improvement by consistently identifying better ways of working
Testing and automation
- Write high-quality automated tests using our TypeScript/Cypress and Java/Appium frameworks, contributing new tests regularly
- Architect and implement improvements to existing test frameworks
- Maintain and enhance test suite reliability and effectiveness
- Debug, monitor, and resolve automation pipeline failures
- Perform manual testing including ticket verification, test case management, and regression testing
- Lead by example in testing practices and demonstrate what excellence looks like
Embedded QA within your product council
- Act as the sole QA representative within your assigned product council
- Build strong relationships and credibility with developers, product managers, and stakeholders
- Participate in refinement sessions from the earliest stages, influencing quality from the start
- Manage stakeholder expectations and communicate quality status clearly and confidently
- Handle multiple concurrent workstreams effectively within your council
The essentials
- Significant QA experience with a background in a senior QA or SDET role
- Expertise in test automation, with proven experience architecting or significantly improving test frameworks
- Strong hands-on experience with end-to-end automation frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress, WebDriver, or Appium
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives and drive them through to completion
- Experience mentoring and upskilling other QA engineers
- A track record of establishing testing standards and best practices within teams
- Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence and advise at all levels
- Experience working in Agile environments embedded within product teams
Highly desirable
- Hands-on experience with TypeScript/Cypress or Java/Appium specifically
- API and contract testing experience
- Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices
- Experience with performance and load testing
- Mobile app testing expertise
- Understanding of test architecture and design patterns
The mindset
- Comfortable working autonomously to identify problems and implement solutions
- Able to influence strategy whilst remaining genuinely hands-on with code
- Energised by mentoring others and helping them grow
- Constructively challenges the status quo to drive meaningful change
- Balances strategic thinking with practical execution
- Proactive in identifying what needs doing without waiting to be directed
- A strong communicator who actively engages across remote and distributed teams
Our tech stack
- Automation frameworks: TypeScript with Cypress (web portal), Java with Appium (mobile apps)
- Product stack: Ruby on Rails backend, React frontend, some Clojure services
- Infrastructure: Kubernetes across cloud and on-premises datacentres
Benefits
- Pension scheme
- Personal performance bonus
- 26 days holiday each calendar year
- Bupa health & dental cover
- Group life assurance
- EAP
- Cycle to work scheme
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