About Methods
Methods is a UK-based IT services consultancy that partners with central government departments and agencies to transform public-sector operations. It develops people-centred, safe, and future-ready business and technical solutions, and is expanding its private-sector client portfolio.
Responsibilities
•Design, develop, and maintain automated API, integration, and end-to-end tests
•Contribute reusable test components and maintainable automation frameworks, apply sound coding practices, and participate in code reviews
•Define testable acceptance criteria and positive, negative, and boundary scenarios with developers, business analysts, and product owners
•Select appropriate testing levels for risks while balancing coverage, execution time, and maintenance effort
•Integrate and maintain automated tests in Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, providing timely, actionable feedback
•Test asynchronous workflows and service interactions, including event processing, messaging, retries, and failure recovery
•Verify business outcomes through APIs, database checks, and user journeys, including downstream processing and data consistency
•Create and maintain repeatable test data, accounting for environment dependencies, test isolation, and parallel execution
•Investigate failures using application logs, API responses, database queries, and pipeline results; distinguish application defects from automation, data, and environment issues
•Improve suite reliability by addressing flaky tests, duplication, and regression coverage gaps
•Turn production defects and recurring incidents into repeatable automated regression scenarios
•Perform targeted exploratory testing and contribute to performance, accessibility, security, and operational readiness testing with relevant specialists
•Maintain test coverage, execution records, and release evidence in Jira/Zephyr, ensuring traceability to changes, environments, and releases
•Raise reproducible defects and collaborate on triage, resolution, and verification
•Communicate testing progress, outcomes, residual risks, and coverage limitations to technical and non-technical stakeholders
Requirements
•Strong hands-on Java programming skills and experience writing, reviewing, and maintaining automated test code
•Practical experience with Serenity BDD, Cucumber/Gherkin, Selenium WebDriver, and REST Assured, supported by frameworks such as JUnit and AssertJ
•Strong understanding of HTTP, REST APIs, JSON, authentication, validation, and error handling
•Experience testing distributed or microservice-based applications, including asynchronous processing and messaging
•Ability to verify end-to-end business workflows across service boundaries, including data persistence and downstream outcomes
•Confidence using SQL and application logs to prepare test data, investigate failures, and validate results
•Experience with Maven, Git, pull requests, and automated build pipelines
•Experience integrating and troubleshooting automated tests in Azure DevOps YAML pipelines or a comparable CI/CD platform
•Understanding of test isolation, parallel execution, synchronisation, and causes of unreliable automated tests
•Experience working in Agile teams and contributing to refinement, Three Amigos discussions, and behaviour-driven development
•Ability to prioritise testing based on business risk and balance component, integration, and end-to-end testing
•Experience managing defects, test execution, and traceable evidence with Jira/Zephyr or equivalent tools
•Clear communication, collaborative problem-solving, and ownership of issues through resolution
•Eligibility to obtain SC clearance
•Willingness to undergo Security Clearance; candidates must complete a Baseline Personnel Security Standard during onboarding. Failure to meet this and associated criteria may delay or prevent employment
Nice to have
•Experience supporting complex public-sector digital services
•Understanding of CQRS and event-sourced systems
•Experience investigating message delivery, retries, and dead-letter queues with technologies such as Apache ActiveMQ Artemis
•Performance/load/stress testing with JMeter or k6
•Experience with Splunk or Grafana
•Experience testing applications hosted in Microsoft Azure and containerised environments including Kubernetes
•Browser automation with Playwright or WebdriverIO
•Accessibility/security/operational readiness testing
•Data migration testing
•ISTQB/ISEB certification or equivalent practical experience
Benefits
•Development access to LinkedIn Learning, a management development programme, and training
•24/7 Confidential employee assistance programme
•Social events and commitment to charitable causes
•25 Days of annual leave
•Pension Salary Exchange Scheme with 4% employer contribution and 5% employee contribution
•Discretionary company bonus based on company and individual performance
•Life Assurance of 4 times base salary
•Non-contributory Private Medical Insurance, including spouse and dependants
•Non-contributory Worldwide Travel Insurance, including spouse and dependants
