QA Lead - Engine by Starling

Starling Bank; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial technology company in London is seeking a QA lead to advance their testing efforts across mobile and web applications. The ideal candidate will have over 5 years of experience in automated testing, particularly in iOS and Android environments. You'll manage a QA team, develop test strategies, and foster a culture of quality. The role offers a hybrid work model and an array of attractive benefits including extensive leave and private medical insurance.

Benefits

33 days holiday including public holidays

Annual leave increased with length of service

16 hours paid volunteering time

Salary sacrifice pension scheme

Private Medical Insurance

Perkbox membership

Cycle to Work scheme

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience with automated testing of applications across iOS, Android and web.
• Experience automating E2E user journeys, especially with mobile applications.
• Good understanding of user experience best practices and UX testing.

Responsibilities

• Develop test strategies and plans, and execute them.
• Manage and scale the existing QA team.
• Implement automated test frameworks and scripts.
• Provide technical guidance to QA team members.

Skills

Automated testing

User experience best practices

Risk analysis

Mentoring

Tools

Maestro

Job description

About the Role

We’re looking for someone to lead our QA function, you will perform both functional and non-functional testing of our mobile and web applications, ensuring that they perform as expected and they meet our very high standards. We are looking for someone who will advocate for testing throughout the lifecycle of the product and who takes pride in ensuring we are releasing good quality software that helps our customers.

In this role, you’ll work with our engineers to enhance our test‑driven development approach to building applications. We aim for a very high level of test automation across our applications so we can deploy to production many times a day. Our engineers are responsible for understanding the desired behaviour of the code they are writing and testing.

You will be expected to use your own initiative to test and validate features, functional controls and logic flows, as well as plan and execute regression testing. You are looking for the missed edge cases, verifying behaviour on a variety of devices and form factors and looking for consistency issues between our platforms. You’ll monitor and drive improvements, and communicate identified risks or issues to the wider team.

At Engine, we spend our time building products that we’re really proud of. We focus on the experience, often delivering things with real polish but sometimes making a fast strategic move. We think being good at product requires clear communication, a sense of focus, and to challenge the conventional ways of doing things. We’re open‑minded when it comes to hiring, we care more about skills and attitude than specific experience or qualifications.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Engine - our preference is that you’re located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we’re able to interact and collaborate in person.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop comprehensive test strategies and plans and execute them.
• Understand the requirements from technical and business specifications, ensuring our products are built in line with them.
• Manage and scale our existing QA team, ensuring that the team’s goals align with our company strategy.
• Helping with regression tests and feature testing.
• Implement and maintain automated test frameworks and scripts.
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to other QA team members.

Qualifications

• Experienced tester who can work under their own initiative, in an autonomous manner, collaborating with all areas of Engine, including engineers, product designers and product owners
• 5+ years of experience with automated testing of applications across iOS, Android and web.
• Experience automating E2E user journeys - ideally with mobile applications, at Engine we QA mainly use Maestro.
• Able to analyse risk, severity, and impact of issues identified and work with the wider team to prioritise and resolve them.
• Maintain an adaptable, pragmatic approach to testing; switching modes to meet the needs of the company.
• Good understanding of user experience best practices and UX testing
• Experience in managing, mentoring and knowledge sharing with team members.

Nice to have

• Experience in banking/fintechs.
• Experience working in a SaaS company with scale.

Interview process

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

• Stage 1 - 45 mins with someone from the tech team
• Stage 2 - 60 min with two team members
• Stage 3 - Final with either CTO/ Deputy CTO or Engineering Director

Benefits

• 33 days holiday (including public holidays, which you can take when it works best for you)
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
• Generous family‑friendly policies
• Incentives refer a friend scheme
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

About Us

You may be put off applying for a role because you don’t tick every box. Forget that! While we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’re always open to discussion. So, if you’re excited about working with us, but aren’t sure if you’re 100% there yet, get in touch anyway. We’re on a mission to radically reshape banking – and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.

Engine by Starling is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Engine by Starling are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. By submitting your application, you agree that Engine by Starling and Starling will collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we will process, where we will process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.