Job Description:

We are seeking an experienced Senior Test Engineer to define and drive the overall test automation strategy across multiple digital delivery teams. In this role, you will provide technical leadership, set quality standards, and ensure the delivery of resilient, accessible, and secure digital services.

You will act as the technical authority for quality engineering, establishing modern automated test frameworks from scratch, overseeing complex data and non-functional testing, and embedding continuous quality gates within modern CI/CD pipelines.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Governance

• Define Strategy: Set the strategic direction for test engineering across product teams, establishing robust, risk-based testing strategies and clear quality metrics.
• Technical Guidance: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to embedded QA engineers, raising team capability and promoting engineering best practices.
• Delivery Oversight: Lead testing activities across parallel workstreams, ensuring quality, time, and cost objectives are met.
• Escalation & Defect Management: Act as the primary technical point of escalation for complex issues, environmental blockers, and risk management (RAID).
• Stakeholder Alignment: Develop tailored test approaches and executive reporting mechanisms to gain alignment with senior business and technical stakeholders.

Quality Engineering & Continuous Improvement

• Framework Architecture: Design, build, and maintain scalable, reusable automation frameworks for UI, API, and backend data flows using modern languages (TypeScript, Python, Java, or C#).
• Data & ETL Testing: Oversee end-to-end data testing strategies across complex, large-scale data environments, validating data transformations, schema integrity, and ETL pipelines (e.g., Informatica, Oracle, SQL).
• Non-Functional Testing (NFT): Embed usability, accessibility (WCAG 2.2 standards), security, stability, and capacity testing early into the development lifecycle.
• Tooling & Infrastructure: Select appropriate test technical tools, define test infrastructure approaches, and optimize execution times to reduce technical debt.
• Standardisation & Collaboration: Drive standardisation by sharing reusable automation libraries across teams, aligning cross-team dependencies, and promoting a culture of experimentation.

Key Competencies & Capability Profile

• Problem Solving & Critical Thinking: Ability to investigate complex process problems, absorb large amounts of conflicting technical information, and formulate actionable recommendations.
• Test Planning & Governance: Expert-level knowledge of system and acceptance test planning, coordinating both functional and non-functional specifications.
• Non-Functional & Risk Management: Skilled in designing and executing non-functional testing techniques, evaluating risk profiles, and prioritizing defects based on severity.
• Delivery Methodologies: Proficient in Agile/Scrum and BDD environments; adept at helping teams visualize outcomes, manage priorities, and deliver against Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
• Technical Landscape Mastery: Deep understanding of cloud environments (AWS/Azure), containerisation (Docker), microservices architecture, and modern digital technology boundaries.

Essential & Desirable Criteria

Essential Requirements:

• Clearance: Active UK Security Clearance (SC Cleared) or immediate eligibility for SC transfer.
• Automation Expertise: Proven experience building UI and API automation frameworks from scratch using tools such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or Pytest.
• ETL & Database Testing: Hands-on experience working in large-scale data environments, writing complex SQL queries, and validating data pipelines (experience with Informatica PowerCenter and Oracle databases).
• CI/CD & Infrastructure: Experience integrating automated test suites into modern CI/CD deployment pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, GitLab CI, Jenkins, AWS).
• Test Leadership: Demonstrated track record of mentoring QA engineers, driving standardisation, and defining end-to-end test strategies.

Randstad Technologies is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.