Lead Test Automation Engineer

Lead Test Automation Engineer

up to £80,000 with a fantastic bonus scheme

Remote First - quarterly visits to South Wales

We are seeking a Lead Test Automation Engineer to play a key role in shaping and advancing modern quality assurance practices aligned to high-performing software engineering teams. This is a hands-on technical leadership position suited to someone who is passionate about automation, quality, and continuous improvement across modern Front End and Back End-for-Front End (BFF) architectures.

You will work closely with cross-functional delivery teams, acting as both a senior individual contributor and a mentor to QA engineers. With a strong shift-left mindset, you will champion automation-first testing strategies that ensure reliability, scalability, performance, and security from the earliest stages of development.

This role offers the opportunity to influence technical direction, embed best practices, and lead by example within a DevSecOps-driven environment.

What You'll Be Doing

Technical Leadership & Direction

• Provide technical leadership for initiatives involving micro frontends and shared Front End platforms.

• Mentor and coach QA engineers, fostering strong automation capability and consistent engineering standards across teams.

• Shape and evolve Front End and BFF quality assurance approaches in line with broader engineering and architectural goals.

• Lead technical discussions, contribute to engineering governance, and promote engineering excellence.

• Partner with product, engineering, and DevOps teams to ensure timely delivery of high-quality solutions.

• Enhance and refine QA standards, best practices, and guidelines to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

Automation & Delivery

• Maintain, enhance, and scale automation frameworks covering Front End applications, APIs, and microservices.

• Identify gaps in test coverage and implement pragmatic, sustainable automation solutions.

• Embed automated test suites into CI/CD pipelines to provide fast, reliable quality feedback.

• Define, track, and report on quality metrics, using insights to drive measurable improvements.

• Design and develop automated functional and non-functional tests, supporting delivery squads as needed.

• Promote shift-left testing, ensuring appropriate test types are executed as early as possible.

• Contribute to end-to-end testing strategies to ensure robust coverage across the technology stack.

Collaboration & Communication

• Work closely with designers, developers, and product teams to embed quality throughout the delivery life cycle.

• Collaborate with architecture, platform, and engineering teams to align testing practices with technical direction.

• Champion a collaborative engineering culture through chapters, squads, and communities of practice.

• Communicate technical concepts and decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What We're Looking For

Essential Technical Experience

• Significant experience designing, building, and maintaining automated test frameworks for Front End, API, and microservices-based systems.

• Strong programming capability in Java and/or TypeScript.

• Hands-on experience with automation and testing tools such as Playwright, Artillery, and RestAssured.

• Deep understanding of software testing approaches, including unit, integration, component, system, performance, and security testing.

• Proven experience testing within CI/CD environments using tools such as GitLab or Azure pipelines.

• Experience with contract testing, mocking/stubbing, and effective test data management.

• Solid understanding of microservices architecture, RESTful APIs, and modern Front End frameworks.

• Working knowledge of containerisation and orchestration technologies, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform.

• Experience working with cloud platforms, ideally GCP.

• Familiarity with compatibility and accessibility testing tools (eg LambdaTest, Axe).

• ISTQB Foundation Certificate in Software Testing (or equivalent).

Desirable

• ISTQB Advanced Test Automation Engineer certification (or equivalent).

• Exposure to Guidewire platform integrations (beneficial but not essential).

Reasonable Adjustments:

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.