Quality Engineer Lead

First Central; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A market-leading insurance company in Manchester seeks a Quality Engineering Lead to champion quality across its teams. The role involves leading automation, facilitating best practices, and implementing end-to-end testing strategies to ensure high-quality software delivery. The company offers a flexible work environment and values its employees, recognized as Insurance Employer of the Year 2024.

Qualifications

• Experience of leadership of quality engineering efforts in agile environments.
• Solid knowledge of performance testing tools and strategies.
• Strong understanding of cloud native application testing.

Responsibilities

• Manage, mentor and support quality engineers across teams.
• Develop and implement test automation strategies in CI/CD.
• Drive the adoption of quality best practices focusing on automation.

Skills

Quality Engineering leadership

Test Automation

BDD Implementation

CI/CD Integration

Cloud Platforms

Performance testing

Security testing

End to End Testing Strategy

Agile Dev Ops practices

Test Management tools

Education

Relevant certifications (e.g., ISTQB, Certified Agile Tester)

Job description

We’re 1st Central, a market-leading insurance company utilising smart data and technology at pace. Rapid growth has been based on giving our 1.4 million customers exactly what they want: great value insurance with an excellent service. And that’s the same for our colleagues too; we won Insurance Employer of the Year at the British Insurance Awards 2024 and our Glassdoor score is pretty mega too!

We’re looking for a Quality Engineering Lead who’ll play a pivotal role in leading and enabling quality engineers who are embedded within our cross functional value stream teams. This role is responsible for championing and embedding a culture of quality across federated value stream teams.

O perat ing in a dynamic, cloud-based environment, you’ll l ead the design and implementation of the Focus quality strategy and will b e responsible for quality engineering practices and standards that emphasise automation, continuous testing and shift left principles.

We value flexible working arrangements, so you can choose to work remotely or maybe you live within a commutable distance from one of our offices in Salford Quays, Manchester, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, or Guernsey , and want to work in the office occasionally.

Core skills were looking for to succeed in the role:

• Quality Engineering leadership

• Test Automation – Strategy, design & delivery

• BDD Implementation

• CI/CD Integration

• Cloud Platforms & testing in cloud native and microservices environment

• Performance testing & tooling

• Security testing & tooling

• End to End Testing Strategy (design & implementation across API, UI & backend)

• Agile Dev Ops practices

• Test Management tools

• Test Data and Environment management

• Root Cause analysis & defect management and reporting

• Identification and management of risk

• Problem solving skills, with the ability to adopt a logical approach

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

What’s involved:

• You’ll manage, mentor and support a group of quality engineers distributed across multiple cross functional teams, ensuring alignment with career development, performance goals and organisational standards

• You’ll drive the adoption of quality best practice, focusing on automation and BDD to ensure alignment with business outcomes and user stories

• You’ll develop and implement test automation strategies that integrate into CI/CD pipelines, and ensure efficient and easily maintainable framework

• You’ll champion quality engineering best practice including CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, observability and secure coding standards within a DevOps culture

• You’ll define and implement a robust end to end testing strategy that includes functional performance, and security testing to ensure high-quality resilient, and secure software delivery across all value streams

• You’ll work with cross functional teams to define testing requirements, lead BDD sessions and ensure test scenarios reflect business needs

• You'll define and monitor key quality metrics, providing reports to assess the platforms quality and track improvement progress

• You’ll design and implement a defect management process

• You’ll collaborate closely with Principal Engineers, Software Engineers, Product Owners, Architects, RTEs and delivery leads to ensure is aligned with business goals and technology, including AI powered solutions to optimise coding, testing, deployment, monitoring and support

• You’ll build and maintain strong relationships with external and internal technology partners, ensuring effective collaboration, alignment with engineering standards, and value delivery from third party services or vendor engagements

• You'll drive the recruitment, onboarding and continuous deployment of quality engineers, ensuring a strong pipeline of talent and future leaders

• You’ll establish and maintain quality governance frameworks and controls balancing autonomy with consistency across the federated engineering teams

• You'll promote a culture of leadership, feedback and experimentation support teams to continuously refine their ways of working

• You’ll support the 24/7 on-call rota to manage incidents as required

• You’ll support the Focus application out of hour releases when required

• You’ll comply with the requirements, and act in accordance with, the Group Code of Conduct and Fitness and Propriety policies at all times

• You’ll ensure compliance with Company Policies, Values and guidelines and other relevant standards/ regulations at all times

Experience & knowledge

• Experience of leadership of quality engineering efforts in agile, cross-functional software development teams

• Strong understanding of cloud platforms and cloud native application testing

• Significant experience in test automation frameworks and tooling (e.g. Selenium, Playwright Junit, TestNG)

• Hands on experience with BDD tools (e.g Cucumber) and Gherkin syntax

• Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pieplines (e.g Jenkins, GitLab, Azure DevOps)

• Solid knowledge of performance testing tools (e.g Jmeter, Gatling) and strategies

• Familiarity with secure testing principles and tools (OWASP, ZAP, SAST/DAST Tools)

• Experience of End-to-End testing strategy design and implementation

• Strong understanding of quality metrics and KPIIs to assess and drive continuous improvement

• Experience of facilitating BDD workshops and collaborating with key business and technical change stakeholders

• Strong working knowledge of agile and DevOps practices including shift left testing and continuous testing

• Proficient with test data management, environment configuration and visualisation techniques

• Experience of aligning testing efforts with business value delivery

• Ideally an Insurance or financial Services background, although other backgrounds will be considered

• Knowledge of FCA requirements (including TCF)

• Extensive experience in Quality Assurance/Quality Engineering with at least 3 years in a lead role

Skills

• Quality Engineering leadership

• Test Automation – Strategy, design & delivery

• BDD Implementation

• CI/CD Integration

• Cloud Platforms & testing in cloud native and microservices environment

• Performance testing & tooling

• Security testing & tooling

• End to End Testing Strategy (design & implementation across API, UI & backend)

• Agile Dev Ops practices

• Test Management tools

• Test Data and Environment management

• Root Cause analysis & defect management and reporting

• Identification and management of risk

• Problem solving skills, with the ability to adopt a logical approach

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

Qualifications

• Relevant certifications preferred (e.g., ISTQB, Certified Agile Tester, BDD Practitioner, AWS Cloud Practitioner)

Behaviours

• Acts as a mentor, leading by example to continuously embed a quality first culture across product teams

• Commercially focussed and results driven taking a pragmatic approach to delivering value

• Self-motivated and enthusiastic

• An organised and pro-active approach

• Ability to work on own initiative and as part of a team

• A flexible approach and positive attitude

• Emphasis on attention to detail and accuracy

• Takes initiative to make decisions

• Strives to drive business improvements to contribute to the success of the business

So, if you’re up for the challenge and would like to join our vibrant and busy team, we want to hear from you today.

What can we do for you?

People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here .

Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.