Lead Quality Coach

Aberdeen; City of Edinburgh; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading investment firm in Edinburgh seeks a Lead Quality Coach to drive quality excellence within teams. You will coach squads in manual testing, define quality strategies, and enhance testing processes. Ideal candidates will have a background in test design techniques and capacity for cross-team collaboration. The role offers excellent benefits including generous leave and pension contributions.

Benefits

40 days’ annual leave

16% employer pension contribution

Private healthcare

Flexible benefits including gym discounts

Qualifications

• Proven record in coaching and facilitating quality practices.
• Experience in exploratory testing methods.
• Capabilities in aligning cross-team test plans.

Responsibilities

• Build capability in squads through coaching and workshops.
• Define and assure test strategies for products.
• Co-own the overall quality strategy and align testing layers.

Skills

Test design techniques

Risk analysis

UAT facilitation

Coaching multi-disciplinary teams

Simplifying flows

Tools

Test management tools

Collaboration tooling

Job description

At Aberdeen, our ambition is to be the UK’s leading Wealth & Investments group.

Strengthening talent and culture is one of our strategic priorities. We strive to make Aberdeen a great place to work so that we can attract and retain the industry’s best talent.

Our people put our stakeholders at the heart of everything they do by helping us to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients, customers, colleagues, shareholders and society.

We are focused on growing our direct and advised wealth platforms and repositioning our specialist asset management business to meet client demand. We are committed to providing excellent client service, supported by leading technology and talent.

Aberdeen comprises three businesses: Interactive Investor (ii), Investments, and Adviser, each of which focuses on meeting and adapting to our clients’ evolving needs.

• Interactive Investor, the UK’s second largest direct‑to‑consumer investment platform, enables individuals in the UK to plan, save and invest in the way that works for them.
• Our Adviser business provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to create value for their customers.
• Our Investments business is a specialist asset manager that focuses on areas where we have both strength and scale to capitalise on the key themes shaping the market, through either public markets or alternative asset classes.

About the Department

At Aberdeen Adviser, we are building a modern, scalable technology platform that empowers financial advisers to serve their clients more efficiently. Our engineering teams work in cross‑functional squads to develop innovative, high‑quality software solutions that make a real impact. We foster a culture of collaboration, experimentation, and continuous learning, where every engineer can shape the future of our platform.

About the Role

We’re building a modern test function where quality is everyone’s job. As Lead Quality Coach you’ll operate as a principal quality leader and coach, enabling squads and large programmes to adopt manual testing excellence, exploratory practices, and quality‑first ways of working. You’ll line‑lead and develop Quality Coaches/Manual Testers, shape programme‑level test strategies, and partner with the Lead Quality Engineer (Automation) to drive cross‑collaboration and side‑skilling across chapters—forming a cohesive, high‑performing testing leadership team. This role is centred on coaching, facilitation and process efficiency: you help teams ship the right thing, at the right quality, with the right evidence.

Key Responsibilities

• Build capability in squads through 1:1 coaching, pairing, workshops, and test clinics; mentor manual testers and enable developers/product roles to contribute to quality.
• Define and assure risk‑based, manual‑led test strategies for products and programmes; facilitate acceptance criteria, test charters and UAT plans.
• Embed exploratory practices, session charters and notes; scale “whole‑team” testing rituals for fast learning cycles.
• Lean out test processes, reduce handoffs, improve feedback loops, and implement light‑weight evidence that satisfies governance.
• Co‑own the overall quality strategy, align manual and automation layers, and side‑skill both chapters to cross‑cover where needed—presenting a single, trusted test leadership voice.

About the Candidate

• Test design techniques, risk analysis, requirements ambiguity hunting, charter‑driven exploratory testing, accessibility/usability checks, UAT facilitation.
• Proven record coaching multi‑disciplinary teams (engineers, PMs, designers), running workshops, and shifting teams from “tester‑owned” to whole‑team quality.
• Confident shaping cross‑team test plans, aligning dependencies, and reporting risk & readiness at initiative level.
• Experience simplifying flows, removing waste, and implementing minimal‑but‑sufficient evidence for compliance.
• Test management/notes tools, lightweight documentation, defect/triage workflows, and collaboration tooling; able to read automation output enough to coach decisions alongside the Lead QE.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our Benefits

There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported. When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around. This includes 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance‑based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal. You can read more about our benefits here.

Our Business

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs. You can find out more about what we do here.

An Inclusive Way of Working

Whatever way you like to work, if you have the talent and commitment to join our team, we’d like to hear from you.

At Aberdeen we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach. This approach combines the benefits of face‑to‑face collaboration, coaching and connecting in our offices with the flexibility of working from home. It enables colleagues to find a balance that works for their roles, their teams, our clients and our business.

An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do. If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements – for example, because you are neurodivergent, or have a physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, visible or invisible disability – please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment. We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance. We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.