Lead Quality Assurance Engineer

Gama Aviation; Farnborough; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Pension

Life Assurance

Income Protection

Travel Insurance

Private Healthcare

Volunteer days

Training & Development

Job summary

Gama Aviation is seeking a Lead Quality Assurance Engineer in Farnborough HQ. This hybrid role (3 days in office) combines hands‑on testing with people leadership, delivering dependable QA, strong coverage and release readiness across our SaaS aviation platform.

You will lead a team of QA engineers, plan and execute manual testing, manage defects, and collaborate with Engineering and Product to embed quality throughout the development lifecycle. Prior ISTQB and Azure DevOps experience are valued.

Qualifications

• Significant hands‑on software QA experience in agile environments.
• Proven leadership of QA delivery with active test planning and release readiness.
• Strong manual testing skills across functional, regression, exploratory, integration, usability testing.

Responsibilities

• Lead QA activities across engineering delivery and manage QA Engineers.
• Conduct one‑to‑ones, support performance discussions and workload planning.
• Coordinate manual testing across multiple workstreams and releases including production support.
• Establish and improve QA standards, processes and documentation for effective testing and release readiness.
• Provide clear testing progress and risk reporting to stakeholders for successful releases.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product to embed quality throughout the lifecycle.
• Apply risk‑based testing to focus on high‑impact areas and manage defects end‑to‑end.
• Lead defect triage and promote a culture of quality ownership across the team.
• Contribute to automation strategy and future QA capabilities.

Skills

QA leadership

Manual testing

Test planning

Defect management

Stakeholder communication

Agile

Risk-based testing

Line management

Quality assurance

Education

ISTQB Foundation Level

Tools

Azure DevOps

Jira

Postman

Job description

Job Details

Division Global Services

Location Farnborough HQ

/ 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 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.

/ Primary 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: / Essential:

• 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.

/ Desirable

• 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.
• Technical knowledge of software development and testing practices, including programming languages (e.g. JavaScript, C# or Java), SQL and RESTful APIs.
• Experience working with cloud technologies, particularly Microsoft Azure.

/ Benefits Include

• Great work life balance with hybrid working
• Competitive Group Pension Scheme
• Comprehensive Life Assurance *
• Comprehensive Income Protection *
• Comprehensive Travel Insurance *
• 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)