IT Quality Assurance Lead

Ellison Institute of Technology; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Travel allowance

Bonus

Pension - employer contribution 7.5%

Private Medical Insurance

Life Assurance

Employee discounts

Cycle to Work Scheme

Nursery Salary Sacrifice

Job summary

Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) is seeking an experienced IT Quality Assurance Lead to plan, coordinate, and govern UAT across IT changes. You will bridge business, delivery, and technology teams to ensure solutions meet requirements and are release-ready with minimal risk.

The role involves establishing UAT standards, coordinating testers, tracking defects, and providing governance across the 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.

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.

Skills

UAT management

Stakeholder coordination

SDLC knowledge

Test governance

Test automation

Education

ISTQB Foundation

Test Manager certification

Tools

Azure DevOps

Jira

TestRail

ALM

Zephyr

Job description

Join us at EIT:

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionaryscientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovatorsto tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Your Role:

At EIT we are seeking an experienced IT Quality Assurance Lead who will be responsible for the planning, coordinating, and governing of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) activities across all IT change initiatives, including both project-driven delivery releases and Business-as-Usual (BAU) enhancements. The role acts as the bridge between business stakeholders, delivery teams, and technology teams to ensure solutions meet business requirements, are fit for purpose, and can be released into production with minimal risk.

The successful candidate will establish and maintain UAT standards, coordinate business testers, manage test execution, track defects, and provide testing governance across the end-to-end change lifecycle.

Your Responsibilities:

UAT Planning & Management

• 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.

Test Design & Execution

• Collaborate with Business Analysts, Product Owners, SMEs, and Delivery Managers to review requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Support the creation and review of UAT test scenarios, test scripts, and test data.
• Coordinate test execution and ensure adequate coverage of business processes, integrations, and end-to-end workflows.
• Monitor progress against plans and provide regular status updates to stakeholders.
• Ensure all critical defects are appropriately prioritised, tracked, and resolved before release.

Stakeholder Management

• Act as the primary point of contact for all UAT-related activities.
• Facilitate defect triage sessions between business and technical teams.
• Engage with business stakeholders to gain testing sign-off and release approval.
• Communicate testing progress, risks, and recommendations to project boards, delivery teams, and senior management.
• Build strong relationships across business, technology, operations, and support functions.

Release & Change Support

• Support delivery and BAU release cycles by providing test readiness and go/no-go recommendations.
• Validate production deployment outcomes through post-release verification activities.
• Ensure traceability between business requirements, testing outcomes, defects, and release decisions.
• Contribute to change governance and release management processes.

Quality Assurance & Continuous Improvement

• Define and maintain UAT standards, templates, processes, and best practices.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance testing effectiveness and efficiency.
• Identify opportunities for test automation and improved test management tooling.
• Produce and maintain testing metrics, KPIs, and reporting dashboards.
• Ensure compliance with audit, regulatory, and governance requirements where applicable.

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Proven experience managing UAT testing within medium to large-scale IT environments.
• Experience supporting both project delivery and BAU change releases.
• Strong understanding of Software Development Lifecycle (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.

Desirable Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Experience within regulated industries such as Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Utilities, or Public Sector.
• Experience of working in a scale up environment.
• Understanding of release management, change management, and ITIL practices.
• ISTQB Foundation or Test Manager certification.
• Experience working within DevOps environments.

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive salary (dependent on experience) + travel allowance + bonus
• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

Working Together – What It Involves:

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary.
• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate).
• Please note this is a hybrid working position where a minimum of 3 working days is required to be worked onsite in our Oxford office each week.