Agile Quality & Test Automation Lead
Location: Hampshire (onsite 5 days per week)
Due to the nature of the work and the customers we support, the successful candidate must be eligible to meet UK Government and contractual personnel security requirements, including the applicable residency requirements for the role, and have the right to work in the United Kingdom. Some roles may also be subject to nationality requirements where these are necessary to meet UK Government or contractual security obligations.
The Quality and Test Automation Lead will be accountable for defining the quality engineering strategy, automated test frameworks, and governance across all SAFe Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Scrum teams. The successful candidate will bridge the gap between development, security, and delivery, ensuring that quality and automated verification are built-in from inception. This is a senior hands-on technical leadership role rather than a traditional Test Manager position. The successful candidate will combine Quality Engineering strategy and governance with hands-on technical leadership across automation architecture, framework design, CI/CD integration and automated quality gates.
Key Responsibilities
•Strategy & Frameworks: Design, implement, and continuously improve automated testing strategies covering functional, non-functional, regression, and security testing across complex systems.
•Agile Integration: Embed quality assurance seamlessly into SAFe Program Increment (PI) planning, team-level Scrum ceremonies, and CI/CD deployment pipelines.
•Team Leadership: Mentor, coach, and upskill test automation engineers and cross-functional team members in modern testing tools and practices.
•Compliance & Reporting: Establish automated quality gates, metrics, and dashboards to provide clear visibility of release readiness and defect leakage to senior stakeholders.
What you'll bring
•Advanced expertise in test automation frameworks (e.g., Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, RestAssured).
•Proficiency in programming/scripting languages such as Python, Java, or JavaScript.
•Hands-on experience integrating test suites with CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, Jenkins, Azure DevOps).
•Familiarity with secure development practices and compliance frameworks relevant to UK public sector projects.
•Strong advocacy for shift-left testing and defect prevention.
•Excellent facilitation skills during backlog refinement and planning sessions.
•Ability to balance rigorous quality standards with aggressive delivery timelines.
•Experience in software quality engineering and automated test frameworks, with a strong background in leading quality assurance governance across Scaled Agile (SAFe) release trains and CI/CD pipelines.
•Technical NVQ Level 4, Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent vocational experience.
Professional Certifications: ISTQB (Test Automation Engineer / Technical Test Analyst) or Certified Agile Tester (CAT); Agile / SAFe certification (e.g. SAFe Practitioner, Scrum Master, or Agile Software Engineering); ITIL Foundation certified.
