Lead Automation Engineer

VANLOQ LIMITED; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A major financial services client is seeking an experienced Lead Automation Test Engineer to work on-site in Sheffield for a 12-month contract. In this role, you will lead the automation strategy and mentor other engineers while developing automated testing for various applications. Ideal candidates should have a strong background in automation testing, particularly with JavaScript, Selenium, and cloud environments. This position offers a hybrid working structure with three days on-site and involves collaboration with stakeholders to enhance quality solutions.

Qualifications

• Strong background in automation testing within financial services or complex enterprise environments.
• Proven experience developing automated test scripts with JavaScript.
• Hands-on experience with automation tools like Selenium and API testing.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor automation engineers, providing technical guidance.
• Develop and maintain automated test frameworks for web and API applications.
• Create test plans and ensure requirements traceability across test assets.

Skills

Automation testing

JavaScript

Selenium WebDriver IO

API Testing

Jenkins

Stakeholder engagement

Agile methodologies

Stakeholder engagement

Agile and Waterfall methodologies

Tools

Selenium

RestAssured

JIRA

Job description

Contract Lead Automation Test Engineer

Financial Services

Location

Sheffield (Hybrid 3 days on-site)

Duration

12-month initial contract

IR35 Status

Inside IR35

We are recruiting for an experienced Lead Automation Test Engineer to join a major financial services client in Sheffield. This role will lead automation strategy, test delivery, and quality engineering across a high-profile programme. You will provide technical leadership to the test engineering team, define best practices, and drive high-quality automated solutions across complex cloud and on-prem environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor automation engineers, providing technical guidance, coaching, and oversight of automation activities.
• Develop, execute, and maintain automated test frameworks and scripts for web, API, database, and cloud-based applications.
• Create comprehensive test plans, test cases, test scenarios, test data, and associated documentation based on requirements and specifications.
• Select and recommend appropriate automation tools based on system architecture and project requirements.
• Define performance test strategies, covering scope, environments, risks, and resource planning.
• Integrate automated testing into CI / CD pipelines (GitLab / Jenkins) and support shift-left testing practices.
• Lead and coordinate SIT / OAT / UAT testing activities with technical and business stakeholders.
• Analyse design documents for testability and ensure requirements traceability across test assets.
• Accurately log, track, and report defects, attend triage sessions, and verify fixes.
• Provide continuous improvement recommendations across test processes, tooling, and automation capability.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and adapt automation approaches to evolving project needs.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Strong background in automation testing within financial services or complex enterprise environments.
• Proven experience developing automated test scripts with JavaScript.
• Hands‑on experience with automation tools such as Selenium WebDriver IO (WDIO), Cucumber, Selenium UI, and RestAssured for API testing.
• Strong manual testing experience alongside automation capability.
• Experience with cloud testing across AWS, Azure, GCP or similar platforms.
• Skilled in Jenkins pipeline creation, CI / CD integration, and automated reporting.
• Web UI testing and database comparison testing expertise.
• Experience with JIRA, Xephyr, and broader test management tools.
• API Testing, API Gateway testing, Batch / ETL testing.
• Experience with GitOps repositories and modern DevOps workflows.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to lead and influence.
• Experience working in Agile and Waterfall delivery environments.

Desirable Experience

• Exposure to Identity & Access Management (IAM) programmes.
• Experience with SailPoint IdentityIQ, identity warehousing, SCIM, REST API, LDAP, OIDC, CSV ingestion.
• Testing experience with Graph Database Management Systems (GDBMS).
• Experience with ServiceNow, Active Directory, AWS / Azure integrations.
• Testing functions and decision points as code, such as Policy-as-Code.
• Pub / Sub and MQ systems testing.
• GCP cloud testing methodologies.
• SaaS platform testing.
• Process improvement leadership establishing performance testing standards and governance.
• Skill sets across languages such as: Java, Cypher, Python, JavaScript, PHP, .NET, Go , SQL Server, MySQL.
• Experience with test tools such as QMetry, TestRail, Postman, Insomnia.
• BDD / TDD experience.

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