Lead Test Engineer

UK Home Office; Croydon; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

Join the UK Home Office as a Lead Test Engineer and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of test engineering. You will lead a team, tackle engineering challenges, and contribute to innovative technology adoption in a recognized Quality Assurance and Testing team. This role offers a competitive salary, exceptional benefits, and opportunities for professional development.

Benefits

Exceptional pension: Employer contribution of 28.97%

Generous leave: 25 days annual leave plus public holidays

Flexible working options including hybrid model

Access to training and funded qualifications

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Qualifications

• Experience in writing secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests using Java.
• Proficient in using CI/CD tools for pipeline automation.
• Strong understanding of performance testing and ability to interpret performance reports.

Responsibilities

• Own and review existing test frameworks, identifying needs for new ones.
• Lead and coach a team of test engineers, solving technical challenges.
• Evaluate tools and recommend approaches for testing innovation.

Skills

Java

Selenium

RestAssured

CI/CD

Performance Testing

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Maven

Gradle

Git

Job description

Join to apply for the Lead Test Engineer role at UK Home Office

Strategic Capability Lead (Digital Data and Technology DDaT) - for Engineering, Quality Assurance and Test (QAT) and UCD Professions at UK Home Office

Are you a hands-on Lead Test Engineer passionate about making a difference?

Join an award-winning team at the Home Office and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of test engineering. We’re looking for individuals to tackle engineering challenges in QAT and build strong collaborative relationships. Working with multi-disciplinary teams, you’ll use your technical, delivery, and leadership skills to drive high-quality engineering practices. Your success will be tied to your team’s outcomes, ensuring safe and secure delivery.

In return, we’ll invest in your development, offer mentorship opportunities and support your growth. As part of the test engineering practice, you’ll contribute to innovative technology adoption and quality strategies, including AI solutions and safe usage in quality engineering.

These roles sit in the His Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO), Police and Public Protection Technology (PPPT) and Migration and Borders Technology Portfolio (MBTP) business areas.

Our Quality Assurance and Testing (QAT) team has earned global recognition, including:

• Testing Team of the Year 2024 at the European Software Testing Awards.
• Achieving TMMi Level 5 Certification with the highest global score.

What will you be doing?

1. Own existing test frameworks and actively review them, identifying need for new frameworks, and deliver these at scale.
2. Lead/coach a team of test engineers and help solve technical challenges that the team may require assistance with, evaluating efficacy of test engineering processes across projects and suggest improvements. Promote convergence, create shared capabilities and data driven approaches within test engineering.
3. Embrace innovation - evaluate tools and recommend approaches that can benefit testing. For instance, ones used for virtualisation, data mocking, contract testing or other automated integration testing techniques, and determine tools and approaches for automated test data management, test results aggregation and release management. Enabling precise, real-time reports of automation test runs and also roll-up reports.
4. Manage test infrastructure usage and determine approach to run distributed, parallel tests. Use container and cloud technology to orchestrate faster, scalable tests while optimising costs.
5. Work with teams to promote use of code scan, code quality, accessibility testing and observability tools.
6. Participate in the QAT Test Engineering community as well as QAT recruitment to help grow it.

Your skills for this role

1. Programming using Java to write secure, reusable, and maintainable automated tests and test utilities. You should be able to use concepts like thread management, synchronisation, resource, and memory management to increase the efficiency of test engineering solutions and be able to use scripting languages like Bash or PowerShell (Lead essential criteria).
2. Using and implementing tools like Selenium, RestAssured, Serenity BDD (or similar), build tools like Maven or Gradle, code management tools like git.
3. Using and implementing unit test frameworks like JUnit, assertion libraries, data serialisation tools, security best practices like OWASP Top 10 and standards such as WCAG to design automated accessibility tests.
4. Extensively using CI/CD tools for pipeline automation and a solid understanding of release pipeline concepts. Familiarity with containerization platforms like Docker and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
5. Using and implementing POM test design pattern and SOLID code design principles. Implementing coding guidelines and standards with a solid understanding of protocols and architectural styles involved in implementing tests.
6. Ability to actively engage with performance testing engineers and work alongside them to identify performance bottlenecks. Ability to read, interpret and articulate performance reports.

At the Home Office, we embrace a diverse range of tools and technologies, including:

• Frameworks: Serenity BDD (Selenium + RestAssured), Playwright, and several bespoke frameworks.
• Performance testing: Locust, JMeter.
• Observability and Monitoring: ELK, Grafana, Dynatrace.

Why Join Us?

• Exceptional pension: Employer contribution of 28.97%.
• Generous leave: 25 days annual leave (rising to 30 with service), 8 public holidays, and 1 day for the King’s Birthday.
• Flexible working: Options include full-time, part-time, compressed hours, job sharing, and a hybrid model (minimum 60% on-site).
• Learning and development: Access to training, technical accreditations, and funded qualifications (subject to approval).
• Recognition and inclusion: A culture that champions diversity, enhanced parental leave schemes, annual bonuses, and recognition awards.

Learn more about our benefits: Benefits - Home Office Careers

Additional Information

This role requires SC clearance. To meet national security vetting requirements, you typically need to have been resident in the UK for at least three years. Unfortunately, we cannot offer sponsorship.

Ready to lead, innovate, and make an impact? Click "Apply" to explore the full job description and salary details.

Seniority level

• Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Full-time

Job function

• Strategy/Planning, Quality Assurance, and Engineering
• Technology, Information and Media, and Engineering Services