Lead Quality Assurance Engineer

myairops; Farnborough; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Great work life balance with hybrid

Private healthcare with family cover

2 volunteering days per year

Investment in training and development

Job summary

myairops is seeking a Lead Quality Assurance Engineer to own and lead the QA function for the platform. You will lead a small QA team while staying hands‑on in testing, ensuring dependable delivery, test coverage and release readiness across engineering squads.

You will drive QA standards, reporting and risk management, shaping the future QA direction, including automation initiatives and collaboration with Product and Cloud teams.

Qualifications

• Significant hands‑on experience in software QA within an Agile environment.
• Proven experience leading QA delivery while involved in test planning, execution and release readiness.
• Hands‑on manual testing including functional, regression, exploratory, integration & usability testing.
• Experience with test management tools like Azure DevOps and Jira.
• Experience testing API endpoints using Postman.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• ISTQB Foundation Level certification or equivalent testing qualification.

Responsibilities

• Lead QA activities across engineering delivery and act as line manager for QA Engineers.
• Conduct regular one‑to‑ones and support performance and development discussions.
• Plan, coordinate and execute manual testing across multiple workstreams, releases and production support.
• Establish and improve QA standards, processes and documentation for testing and release readiness.
• Provide reporting on testing progress, quality risks, defects and release readiness.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product to embed quality throughout the lifecycle.
• Apply risk‑based testing to focus on critical areas and customer impact.
• Lead defect triage and prioritisation and ensure timely resolution.
• Promote culture of quality ownership across the engineering organisation.
• Contribute to ongoing evolution of QA capabilities and future automation strategy.

Skills

QA leadership

Manual testing

Test planning

Stakeholder management

Release readiness

Quality metrics

Team mentoring

Education

ISTQB Foundation Level

Tools

Azure DevOps

Jira

Postman

Cypress

Selenium

Microsoft Azure

Job description

/ Job Title:

Lead Quality Assurance Engineer

/ Location:

Farnborough HQ (Hybrid, 3 days per week in office)

/ Working Hours:

40 hours per week, Monday – Friday

As Quality Assurance Lead, you will be responsible for ensuring the quality, stability and release readiness of the myairops platform while leading and developing a small team of QA Engineers. This is a hands‑on role that combines practical testing expertise with people leadership, providing clear visibility of product quality and release confidence across our engineering teams.

We're looking for someone who enjoys leading people while remaining hands‑on and closely involved in the delivery of high‑quality software. You'll bring a pragmatic, delivery‑focused approach to quality assurance, balancing pace with risk management and ensuring stakeholders have confidence in the products we deliver.

/ About us:

myairops is a leader in SaaS solutions for the aviation industry, supporting customers worldwide across corporate flight departments, brokers, medical providers, military operations and business aviation. We build innovative, web‑delivered software and connected mobile applications that solve complex operational challenges.

We’re a team of experts, optimists and problem‑solvers who value communication, respect and shared success. If you want to be part of an ambitious, growing company with a strong culture, this is the place to be.

/ More about the role:

As QA Lead, you'll provide day‑to‑day leadership for the QA function while remaining actively involved in manual testing activities. Your immediate focus will be ensuring dependable QA delivery, strong test coverage, effective defect management and clear communication of quality status across the business.

This role offers the opportunity to shape the future direction of Quality Assurance at myairops, helping to evolve and mature testing practices, introduce quality improvements and contribute to our longer‑term automation strategy.

/ Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Lead QA activities across engineering delivery while acting as the formal line manager for our QA Engineers.
• Conduct regular one‑to‑ones, support performance and development discussions, oversee workloads and contribute to colleague wellbeing.
• Plan, coordinate and execute manual testing activities across multiple workstreams, releases and production support activities, including functional, regression, exploratory, integration and usability testing.
• Establish, maintain and continuously improve QA standards, processes and documentation to support effective testing, defect management and release readiness.
• Provide clear reporting on testing progress, quality risks, defects and release readiness to support successful software releases.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product teams to embed quality throughout the development lifecycle and strengthen requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Apply risk‑based testing approaches to focus effort on areas of greatest customer, operational and business impact.
• Lead defect triage activities and ensure issues are appropriately prioritised, retested and communicated through to resolution.
• Promote a culture of quality ownership and consistent testing practices across the engineering organisation.
• Contribute to the ongoing evolution of QA capabilities, including future automation initiatives.

/ Skills, Qualifications and Experience required:

• Significant hands‑on experience in software quality assurance within an Agile software development environment.
• Proven experience leading QA delivery whilst remaining actively involved in test planning, execution and release readiness.
• Strong hands‑on manual testing capability, including test planning, test case creation, regression, exploratory, integration and usability testing.
• Experience using Azure DevOps, Jira or equivalent tools for test management, work tracking and defect management.
• Experience testing API endpoints using tools such as Postman.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with experience producing quality reporting and communicating testing outcomes, risks and release readiness to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Strong critical thinking and judgement, with the ability to assess quality risks and make pragmatic release readiness recommendations.
• Confident, collaborative leadership style with the ability to bring structure and clarity to QA activities.
• ISTQB Foundation Level certification or equivalent testing qualification.
• Leadership training and/or experience mentoring and developing QA professionals.
• Experience introducing or improving QA dashboards, reporting frameworks or quality metrics.
• Experience with automated testing frameworks such as Cypress or Selenium, alongside broader test automation approaches and strategy development.
• Experience working with cloud technologies, particularly Microsoft Azure.

/ Benefits include:

• Great work life balance with hybrid working
• Comprehensive Private Healthcare, with the ability to add Family Members at a discounted rate (after successful passing of probation) *
• 2 Paid Volunteering Days each calendar year (subject to line manager approval)
• Investment in Training, Qualifications and Professional Development

* (Subject to insurance underwriting)

Due to the volume of applications received, only candidates selected for interview will be contacted. If you do not hear from us within 20 working days then your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.