Role: Lead Test Engineer/Principal SDET REF 101499
Contract Length: 12 months
Location: Hybrid/Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham or Newcastle – 60% in office
IR35: Inside
Pay Rate to Intermediary: Up to £640 per day
Security Clearance: SC requested
Spinwell is recruiting for a Lead Test Engineer/Principal SDET for an excellent opportunity within the public sector.
Responsibilities
Test Strategy & Leadership
- Define and implement an end‑to‑end test strategy aligned to microservices architecture
- Establish standards, patterns, and best practices across multiple teams
- Assess current testing approaches and drive continuous improvement
- Embed testing strategy across teams, creating scalable frameworks and exemplars
Hands‑on Engineering
- Design, build, and maintain automated test frameworks
- Work across different test levels: unit, integration, contract, system, and E2E
- Lead automation efforts in Java‑based environments
- Support teams with implementation, not just direction
Collaboration & Governance
- Partner with engineering teams and stakeholders to ensure alignment
- Provide technical leadership and coaching to testers and developers
- Ensure testing practices are consistently applied across teams
- Maintain visibility of quality and delivery outcomes
Skills / Experience
Technical Expertise
- Strong experience designing and implementing test strategies for microservices environments
- Hands‑on automation experience using:
- Java, Selenium, Rest Assured
- API, contract, and integration testing
- Experience working with monolith and microservices systems
- Knowledge of:
- CI/CD pipelines
- Spring Boot‑based applications
- Performance testing fundamentals
Modern Testing Practices
- Strong understanding of contract testing, API testing, and asynchronous messaging (e.g. Kafka)
- Non‑functional testing (performance, accessibility)
Databases
- Experience with non‑relational databases (e.g. MongoDB)
Automation‑First Mindset
- Ability to build reusable, maintainable frameworks
Leadership
- Experience operating at Lead / Principal level
- Ability to influence stakeholders without direct authority
- Strong communication skills across technical and non‑technical audiences
Tools & Technologies
- Cloud: AWS
- Test Frameworks: Selenium, Serenity BDD, Playwright
- Contract Testing: Pactflow, Spring Cloud Contract
- Messaging: Kafka
- Databases: MongoDB
- CI/CD & DevOps: GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins, Docker
- Performance Testing: Gatling, K6
- Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk
If you are a Lead Test Engineer/Principal SDET, apply now or send your CV to Spinwell!
We welcome all applications regardless of background, in line with our commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion.
Applying to this or any other vacancy advertised by Spinwell Ltd constitutes an agreement for Spinwell Ltd to hold your details for 24 months for the purpose of assessing suitability for the advertised position and to make you aware of any other positions deemed suitable of which You will make you aware by means of either email, text or phone. In line with GDPR regulations you are able to request your details be removed from the company data at any time by emailing us
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