Principal Test Automation Engineer

Hastings Insurance Services Limited; Leicester; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading digital insurance provider in the UK seeks an experienced Testing Automation Lead to support Scrum teams in driving an automation-only approach. This role entails enhancing automation frameworks and mentoring staff while ensuring continuous test coverage. The ideal candidate will have strong leadership skills, extensive experience in agile environments, and knowledge of various automated testing tools.

Benefits

Flexible working – hybrid approach

Competitive bonus scheme

Private medical insurance

Life assurance cover

Income protection

27 days annual leave + bank holidays

Qualifications

• Proficient practical experience working in a Testing Automation role.
• Extensive experience working in an agile environment.
• Transformational leadership skills to influence decision‑making.

Responsibilities

• Support Scrum Teams with automation capabilities.
• Enhance automation frameworks and mentor staff.
• Maintain tooling for continuous testing and quality measures.

Skills

Testing Automation

Agile methodologies

Leadership

Mentoring

Tools

Jira

Cucumber

Selenium

GitHub

Azure DevOps

Job description

Overview

We are looking for an experienced Testing Automation Lead to support our Scrum Teams and drive the Automation‑Only approach across the organization. The role involves enhancing our automation framework, mentoring staff, and collaborating with stakeholders to deliver high‑quality, continuous test coverage.

Responsibilities

• Provide automation capabilities that support Scrum Teams to deliver on the Automation‑Only approach, reducing the percentage of tests that cannot be automated by designing and implementing extensions/adjustments to the Automation Frameworks.
• Identify new opportunities to enhance/extend our test automation capabilities with new and/or updated tooling, supporting evaluation, decision‑making, implementation and maintenance of these tools.
• Manage the ongoing maintenance of the tooling to meet growing demand, increase performance and enable Scrum Teams to test early and often on a continuous basis.
• Provide capabilities to support the provision of timely and accurate Test Automation MI for all Scrum Teams, including quality measures where possible to support continuous improvement.
• Define, implement and maintain test automation best practices and drive proactive collaboration and engagement within Scrum Teams and the wider QA community through the Centre of Excellence as well as regular Brown Bag sessions and other means of engagement.
• Mentor all direct reports, junior staff, and new joiners to achieve the necessary competencies to progress.

Qualifications

• Proficient practical experience working in a Testing Automation role.
• Extensive experience working in an agile environment.
• Transformational leadership skills, able to influence decision‑making and implement new tools, processes and procedures in support of the company’s vision.
• Good mentoring skills to support direct reports in their ongoing development.

Tools & Technologies

• Proficient knowledge of at least one agile methodology (e.g. Scrum, Kanban, SAFe).
• Familiar with backlog and test case management in a system of record such as Jira or Octane.
• Excellent knowledge of declarative Gherkin to capture business rules, run as automated tests with Cucumber.
• Strong coding skills to implement automated tests in Java, JavaScript, TypeScript or C#.
• Comfortable with source control using GitHub.
• Skilled in UI automation with Selenium & Selenium Grid, Playwright or Cypress.
• Ability to implement tests against API in code or via tools such as SoapUI or Postman.
• Good understanding and experience using continuous integration platforms such as Azure DevOps or Jenkins (or equivalent).

About the Company

We are a digital insurance provider with ambitious plans to become the best and biggest in the UK market. Our CIO team drives innovation and supports our technology infrastructure. We nurture a 4Cs culture – collaboration, creativity, continuous improvement, and community.

Benefits

Regrettably, we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role. In addition to a competitive salary and £5k car allowance, you will also receive:

• Flexible working – hybrid approach.
• Competitive bonus scheme – all colleagues eligible for the annual 4Cs performance bonus.
• Physical wellbeing – private medical insurance (PMI).
• Financial wellbeing – 4× salary life assurance cover, income protection at no extra cost, matched pension contributions up to 10%, plus discounts, cashback, free mortgage advice and financial support.
• Mental wellbeing programme – Thrive mental health app, colleague assistance programme 24/7, in‑house mental health first aiders and support groups.
• 27 days annual leave + bank holidays with the option to buy or sell a week.
• Health‑care cash‑back plans, dental plans, discounted health assessments, cycle‑to‑work and tech schemes, free onsite facilities, social events, and more.

Equal Opportunity Statement

At Hastings Direct, we are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.