QA Lead Engineer

ZipRecruiter; London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company as a QA Lead Contractor, where you will drive the testing strategy and enhance automation practices. This role offers the opportunity to lead QA initiatives, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and foster a culture of quality and accountability. Your expertise in automation tools and frameworks will be crucial in establishing scalable testing processes that align with business objectives. If you are passionate about quality assurance and eager to make a significant impact, this is the perfect opportunity for you.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in QA leadership and automation strategies.
• Strong background in test automation and CI/CD practices.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain a clear testing strategy aligned with business needs.
• Empower engineers to take ownership of their testing responsibilities.

Skills

QA leadership

Automation strategies

Test automation

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

JavaScript

TypeScript

Python

CI/CD pipelines

Tools

TestContainers

Checkly

Terraform

Job description

Job Description

QA Lead Engineer (Contract)

Overall Ambition

Drive a high-quality engineering culture by leading QA across the Stock and ABP teams, implementing best practices, and ensuring teams deliver with confidence and speed. Define and champion a unified QA strategy, automation frameworks, and knowledge-sharing initiatives across the department.

The Role

As a QA Lead Contractor, you will work closely with engineering, product, and operations teams to establish scalable testing processes, define quality standards, and ensure robust automation practices. You will be the go-to expert for testing strategies, automation tools, and best practices while fostering a culture of ownership and accountability.

Key Responsibilities

• QA Strategy & Governance: Define and maintain a clear testing strategy that aligns with engineering and business needs.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work with engineering leads, product managers, and stakeholders to embed testing as a key part of the development lifecycle.
• Automation & Tooling: Select, implement, and scale automation frameworks, ensuring efficiency and reliability.
• Knowledge Sharing: Conduct training sessions and document best practices to improve QA awareness across all teams.
• Continuous Improvement: Track and analyze testing metrics, drive process improvements, and reduce testing bottlenecks.
• Testing Ownership: Empower engineers to take responsibility for their testing while ensuring a robust safety net through automation.
• Risk-Based Testing: Introduce a structured approach where test coverage is aligned with business impact and risk.
• Incident Management: Implement a structured approach for post-release monitoring, bug triaging, and root cause analysis.

Tools & Frameworks

The QA Lead Contractor will oversee and enhance the usage of our existing tools, ensuring they support a scalable and effective testing strategy and introduce new ones.

Skills & Experience

• Extensive experience in QA leadership, driving automation strategies and setting up scalable testing frameworks.
• Strong background in test automation, including tools such as Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, TestContainers, and Checkly.
• Deep understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform ).
• Strong programming experience in JavaScript, TypeScript, or Python for test automation.
• Experience working with observability tools (e.g., monitoring logs, distributed tracing, and alerting mechanisms).
• Ability to define and track key quality metrics to measure and continuously improve the testing process.
• Security and compliance awareness, ensuring testing processes align with least privilege access and automated secrets management.
• Experience with Stock & Finance Systems or ABP (Accounting, Banking, and Property) Teams is a plus.

Why Join Us?

As a QA Lead Contractor, you will drive the department’s testing strategy, improve automation coverage, and establish a culture of quality and ownership. If you have deep technical expertise, thrive on collaboration, and want to shape the future of testing, we’d love to hear from you.