Principal AI Quality Engineer

HotSchedules; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 holidays with flexibility

Hybrid working environments

Wellness and gym discounts

Laptop and equipment provided

Healthcare expense claims

Professional certifications support

Annual meet ups

Enhanced parenting scheme

Cycle to work scheme

Pension and life insurance

On demand pay tools

Job summary

Fourth LTD is hiring a Principal AI Quality Engineer to shape the global QA strategy for AI‑driven software. You will own the strategy, standards, and governance across AI‑assisted and autonomous development, aligning with the company’s technology roadmap and business goals.

You will lead cross‑functional teams, define KPIs, and drive modern testing practices including AI tooling, CI/CD, and observability. This senior role demands strategic vision and strong English communication, with hybrid

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of non‑deterministic, ML/LLM‑based, and agentic systems testing challenges, including evaluation, guardrails, and model behavior regression.
• Experience defining and implementing QA strategy at enterprise scale.
• Experience establishing test automation best practices across multiple teams.
• Proven ability to shape or lead QA for AI‑assisted and/or agentic AI development.
• Track record of defining quality KPIs & gates.
• Ability to influence and mentor senior engineering and product stakeholders.
• Experience creating and owning technical strategy documentation.
• Strong Agile delivery experience at scale.
• Excellent written and spoken English.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve Fourth’s AI‑driven global QA strategy and roadmap aligned with product/tech roadmaps.
• Establish QA tools, standards, and ways of working across the global engineering org.
• Drive unification and improvement of testing processes across delivery teams.
• Act as principal escalation point for complex testing/quality challenges.
• Champion modern testing technologies and AI‑driven tooling adoption.
• Define and own quality KPIs and gates for AI delivery.
• Own engineering defect management and prevention approaches.
• Lead QA for AI development end to end, including AI code generation and agentic systems.
• Set governance for non‑deterministic/AI‑driven systems and test strategies for LLM features.
• Establish standards for validating AI‑generated code for quality and security.
• Partner with leadership to embed AI fluency and modern QA practices globally.

Skills

AI QA strategy

Enterprise QA leadership

Test automation

AI-assisted/agentic AI testing

Quality KPIs & gates

Technical leadership

Tech strategy docs

Agile at scale

English communication

Tools

Playwright

Jenkins

Azure DevOps

Octopus Deploy

Prometheus

Grafana

Sumo Logic

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Our Story

In July 2019, Fourth joined forces with HotSchedules to become the global leader in end-to-end restaurant and hospitality management technology solutions. Together, the merged company now represents the world’s largest and only provider of end-to-end restaurant and hospitality management solutions for customers across the globe and of all sizes, from a single location or franchisee restaurant to a global restaurant or hotel chain. The combined company’s complete software-as-service (SaaS) solution suite including scheduling, time & attendance, applicant tracking, training, inventory management / procurement, HR / benefits and payroll services now serves customers in 120,000 locations worldwide and is supported by a dedicated, unified team across offices in the US, UK, Bulgaria, China, Australia, and UAE.

Interested in joining our smart, fun, and talented team?

Position Overview

This is an exciting opportunity to define how a global technology company assures quality in the age of AI. Fourth is seeking an exceptional, strategically minded Principal AI Quality Engineer to drive our AI-driven global QA strategy from the front. Reporting to the Global Head of Service Delivery within Technology, you will be the most senior quality voice in the organisation, shaping how quality is engineered across Fourth’s systems in an era of AI-assisted and agentic AI development. You will set the vision, standards, and frameworks that build quality, reliability, and trust into everything we ship, aligning the QA strategy directly with the company’s technical vision, roadmap, and business strategy. If you want to leave a lasting mark on how software quality and AI come together at scale, this is the role to do it.

Primary Responsibilities

• Define, own, and continuously evolve Fourth’s AI-driven global QA strategy and roadmap, aligned with the Product and Technology roadmaps, to shape the strategic testing needs of the business.
• Establish the QA tools, frameworks, standards, and ways of working across our global engineering organisation to achieve our technology goals.
• Drive the unification and continuous improvement of testing processes and practices across delivery teams, partnering directly with Software Engineering Managers and Product Managers.
• Act as the principal point of escalation for complex testing and quality challenges across global Engineering teams, marshalling subject matter expertise to resolve them.
• Champion modern testing technologies, frameworks, and tools across Engineering, including the responsible adoption of AI.
• Define and own the quality KPIs and quality gates that measure product quality and the effectiveness of AI-assisted delivery.
• Own the Engineering Defect Management process and the organisation-wide approach to defect prevention.
• Lead Fourth’s QA approach for AI development end to end, covering both AI-assisted development (such as AI code generation and developer copilots) and agentic AI development (autonomous and semi-autonomous systems).
• Establish quality, evaluation, and governance frameworks for non-deterministic and AI-driven systems, including test and evaluation strategies for LLM-based and agentic features.
• Set enterprise standards for validating AI-generated code, ensuring it meets Fourth’s quality, security, and maintainability requirements.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Service Delivery leadership to embed AI fluency and modern quality practice across the organisation, mentoring and uplifting QA capability globally.

Key Skills and Competencies

• Strong understanding of the testing and quality challenges of non-deterministic, ML/LLM-based, and agentic systems, including evaluation, guardrails, and the regression of model-driven behaviour.
• Proven experience defining and implementing QA strategy at an organisational or enterprise scale.
• Experience establishing test automation best practice, both functional and non-functional, across multiple teams.
• Demonstrable experience shaping or leading a QA approach for AI-assisted and/or agentic AI development.
• Track record of defining and analysing quality KPIs and quality gates.
• Ability to influence and provide technical leadership and mentoring across senior engineering and product stakeholders.
• Experience creating and owning technical strategy and process documentation.
• Strong experience with Agile software delivery at scale.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with fluent English (written and spoken).

Preferred Experience And/or Qualifications

• Familiarity with MLOps or LLMOps practices, and with monitoring and observing the behaviour of AI systems in production.
• Exposure to prompt design and prompt/response evaluation techniques for AI-enabled features.
• Strong programming proficiency in C# or Java.
• Expertise in web and API testing, including hands-on UI automation with modern tools such as Playwright (or comparable frameworks).
• Proven ability to design and implement robust, scalable QA test strategies and automation frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with performance, security and non-functional testing.
• Practical experience using AI-assisted development tools (such as GitHub Copilot or similar), with a clear understanding of how to assure the quality, security, and maintainability of AI-generated code.
• A practical understanding of how AI is reshaping software delivery and the new quality risks it introduces, with the drive to keep Fourth’s testing practices at the leading edge.
• Experience with CI/CD tooling, e.g. Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Octopus Deploy.
• Experience with observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Sumo Logic.

Benefits

• Holidays. We all need to rest so you get 25 basic holidays with the option to grow up to 30 with service + your birthday off + bank holidays!
• Flexible working! Use our flexible working hours and hybrid working environments to manage it.
• Wellness activities and a lot of pampering included. On top of that, you can add gym subscription discounts.
• Laptop and equipment.
• Healthcare expense claim tools!
• Like in life, at work we also want you to grow with certifications.
• Annual meet ups!
• Enhanced parenting scheme!
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan provided.
• Pension and life insurance? Several, for you to choose what looks convenient.
• On demand pay tools for you to be able to access salary even before the end of the month!

All personal data provided by you in your application will be processed by Fourth LTD solely for our recruitment purposes. More information on Fourth LTD's privacy policy for job candidates is available here and by applying you confirm that you have read it.

Fourth is an Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration without discrimination because of sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, race, colour, age, national origin, military status, religion, or disability or any other legally protected status.