Principal QA Engineer

Aegon; Witham; Hybrid; GBP 71,000 - 106,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Enhanced pension

Discretionary bonus

34 leave days per year

Job summary

Aegon in Edinburgh or Witham seeks a high‑impact Principal QA Engineer to lead quality engineering strategies and DevOps adoption. You’ll drive AI-enabled testing, ensure CI/CD integration, and guide delivery teams across multiple domains.

The role focuses on governance, risk mitigation and automation leadership within a senior, hybrid work model requiring in-office collaboration.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in defining and driving Quality Engineering strategies across large-scale technology environments.
• Experience influencing and leading cross-functional teams without direct line management authority.
• Delivered automation-first testing approaches, CI/CD pipelines and modern Quality Engineering practices.
• Established quality standards, technical quality gates, assurance frameworks and managed technology delivery risks.
• Proven experience evaluating, implementing and governing AI-enabled testing solutions.
• Transformed testing and quality assurance practices within complex organisations.
• Lead QA Engineering functions across large-scale business and technology transformation programmes.

Responsibilities

• Defining programme level/value stream Quality Engineering strategies aligned to business objectives.
• Establishing technical quality governance, reporting and assurance frameworks.
• Defining, implementing and governing technical quality gates.
• Leading and Governing technical testing for automation, NFR validation and release readiness activities.
• Driving proactive identification of technical, delivery and operational risks.
• Driving and defining automation and AI testing strategies using automation first delivery models.
• Ensuring automated testing forms part of all CI/CD pipelines.
• Promoting “Keep us Safe, Keep us stable” ownership of quality across delivery teams.
• Establishing quality metrics including coverage, deployment success and stability.
• Driving continuous improvement through engineering excellence and automation.
• Leading adoption of AI-enabled testing and governance of test engineering practices.
• Acting as the technical quality representative for strategic technology initiatives.
• Managing relationships across internal teams, suppliers and delivery partners.
• Shaping and evolving the organisation’s Quality Engineering strategy.
• Mentoring, managing and developing team members

Skills

Quality Engineering

DevOps

AI testing

Automation testing

CI/CD

Performance testing

Security testing

Agile

TDD/BDD

Leadership

Job description

Job Description Summary

Job Description

Principal QA Engineer

Permanent

Location: Edinburgh or Witham (We believe in the power of in-person collaboration, and our hybrid model requires colleagues to be in the office a minimum of 40% of their time )

Salary: £70,800 - £106,200 (depending on the experience you can bring)

Closing date: 23rd October 2026

We’re Aegon. We’re a company of ambitious, positive problem-solvers who get things done. We’re a team, not a group of individuals. Collaboration is our life force and we believe it’s our duty to leave things better than we find them.

We help people live their best lives. We help them with the big stuff, for the moments that matter: Pensions, Savings, Investments. At Aegon, we strive in creating a diverse organisation that plays a meaningful role in driving greater equity, inclusion and belonging.

We are now looking for a Principal QA Engineer to join us in Edinburgh or Witham. This is a senior Technical Testing/Quality Engineering leadership role responsible for the QA Engineering strategic shift to DevOps and AI Augmented delivery model.

Operating at strategic level, you will provide end-to-end quality engineering leadership across multiple delivery teams, products and technology domains. You will be accountable for establishing quality strategies, driving and implementing said strategies, governing and measuring the implementation and adoption of them and ensuring adherence to the Quality Engineering & DevOps (QEDO) operating model.

The role combines the responsibilities with modern Quality Engineering, DevOps, Performance Engineering and AI-enabled delivery practices.

You will work with Solution Architects and Engineers to ensure that robust Quality Engineering DevOps solutions are embedded within the delivery teams and will oversee the implementation into the delivery teams from inception through to production operation.

Key Responsibilities for the role include:

• Defining programme level/value stream Quality Engineering strategies aligned to business objectives.
• Establishing technical quality governance, reporting and assurance frameworks.
• Defining, implementing and governing technical quality gates.
• Ensuring compliance with DoR and DoD
• Leading and Governing technical testing for automation, NFR validation and release readiness activities.
• Driving proactive identification of technical, delivery and operational risks.
• Driving and defining automation and AI testing strategies using automation first delivery models.
• Ensuring automated testing forms part of all CI/CD pipelines.
• Promoting “Keep us Safe, Keep us stable” ownership of quality across delivery teams.
• Establishing quality metrics including coverage, deployment success and stability.
• Driving continuous improvement through engineering excellence and automation.
• Leading adoption of AI-enabled testing and governance of test engineering practices.
• Acting as the technical quality representative for strategic technology initiatives.
• Managing relationships across internal teams, suppliers and delivery partners.
• Shaping and evolving the organisation’s Quality Engineering strategy.
• Mentoring, managing and developing team members

We’d love to hear from you if you have:

• Proven experience in defining and driving Quality Engineering strategies across large-scale technology environments.
• Experience influencing and leading cross-functional teams without direct line management authority.
• Delivered automation-first testing approaches, CI/CD pipelines and modern Quality Engineering practices.
• Established quality standards, technical quality gates, assurance frameworks and managed technology delivery risks.
• Proven experience evaluating, implementing and governing AI-enabled testing solutions.
• Transformed testing and quality assurance practices within complex organisations.
• Lead QA, Testing, or Quality Engineering teams and built high-performing functions.
• Designed and implemented test automation frameworks, cloud-based testing tools and continuous testing solutions.
• Experience in performance testing, security testing, observability and non-functional assurance.
• Proven experience in applying AI-driven, predictive, or intelligent testing capabilities.
• Worked within Agile, DevOps, Continuous Delivery, TDD and BDD environments.
• Influenced stakeholders at all levels, including senior leadership, to embed quality-first principles.
• Lead QA Engineering functions across large-scale business and technology transformation programmes.
• Managed third-party suppliers and outsourced delivery partners.
• Experience in operating within regulated industries, particularly Financial Services.
• Experience in building, mentoring, developing and scaling QA Engineering teams.
• Worked with enterprise architecture principles and end-to-end software delivery lifecycles.

What’s in it for you?

• We’re serious about your future and our enhanced pension scheme is now in place. We ask you to contribute 3% of your salary to your pension and we’ll put in 9%. If you decide to contribute more, we’ll match it up to a combined total of 20% of your salary (that’s 7% from you and 13% from us).
• A discretionary bonus, depending on personal and company performance
• 34 days leave per year (including bank holidays, pro-rated for part-time)

We also offer private medical cover, life assurance, critical illness cover, enhanced parental leave and a variety of lifestyle benefits to help our employees live their best lives, including retail discount vouchers, cycle2work scheme, subsidised restaurant and online GP appointments. To find out more about what to expect at Aegon, visit our careers site.

The legal bits

We’ll need you to confirm you have the right to work in the UK. If we offer you a job and you accept, there are some checks we need to complete before you can start with us. This will include a credit and criminal record check, as well as providing satisfactory references.

Equal Opportunity Employer:** **

We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their age, disability, race, religion/belief, gender, sexualorientationor gender identity.