Hybrid UAT Lead – IT Quality Assurance (Oxford)

Ellison Institute, LLC; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Pension contribution

Private Medical Insurance

Employee discounts

Cycle to Work Scheme

Job summary

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) invites an accomplished IT Quality Assurance Lead to oversee UAT across project and BAU IT changes. You will act as the conduit between business, delivery, and technology teams to ensure solutions meet requirements and can be released with minimal risk.

You will establish UAT standards, coordinate testers, manage test execution, track defects, and provide governance across the end-to-end change lifecycle in a hybrid Oxford-based environment.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing UAT testing within medium to large IT environments.
• Experience supporting both project delivery and BAU change releases.
• Strong understanding of SDLC, Agile, Waterfall and hybrid delivery methodologies.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating business stakeholders and subject matter experts during testing activities.
• Strong defect management and test governance experience.
• Experience using test management and defect tracking tools (e.g., Azure DevOps, Jira, TestRail, ALM, Zephyr).
• Excellent planning, organisational, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and competing deadlines.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience of test automation frameworks and tooling.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end UAT process for IT deliverables across project and BAU release cycles.
• Develop and maintain UAT strategies, plans, schedules, and test approaches aligned to delivery timelines.
• Define UAT entry and exit criteria and ensure testing readiness before execution.
• Coordinate UAT activities across multiple concurrent releases and initiatives.
• Manage testing risks, dependencies, assumptions, and issues through to resolution.
• Ensure appropriate business representation and stakeholder participation throughout testing activities.
• Collaborate with BAs, Product Owners, SMEs, and Delivery Managers to review requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Support creation and review of UAT test scenarios, scripts, and data.
• Coordinate test execution and ensure coverage of business processes, integrations, workflows.
• Monitor progress and provide status updates to stakeholders.
• Ensure critical defects are prioritised, tracked, and resolved before release.
• Act as the primary point of contact for UAT activities.
• Facilitate defect triage sessions between business and technical teams.
• Engage with stakeholders to gain testing sign-off and release approval.
• Communicate testing progress, risks, and recommendations to project boards.
• Build relationships across business, technology, operations, and support functions.
• Provide test readiness and go/no-go recommendations for releases.
• Validate production outcomes through post-release verification.
• Ensure traceability between requirements, testing, defects, and releases.
• Contribute to change governance and release management processes.
• Define and maintain UAT standards, templates, processes, and best practices.
• Drive continuous improvement to enhance testing effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities for test automation and tooling enhancements.
• Produce testing metrics and dashboards.
• Ensure audit/regulatory/governance compliance where applicable.

Skills

UAT management

SDLC understanding

Agile/Waterfall/Hybrid

Stakeholder management

Test governance

Test automation awareness

Education

ISTQB Foundation or Test Manager certification

Tools

Azure DevOps

Jira

TestRail

ALM

Zephyr

Job description

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) invites an accomplished IT Quality Assurance Lead to oversee UAT across project and BAU IT changes. You will act as the conduit between business, delivery, and technology teams to ensure solutions meet requirements and can be released with minimal risk.

You will establish UAT standards, coordinate testers, manage test execution, track defects, and provide governance across the end-to-end change lifecycle in a hybrid Oxford-based environment.