Senior Automation Engineer

Stepchange; Ledston; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Stepchange in Leeds, England, is seeking a Senior Automation Engineer to shape automation strategy and deliver scalable testing solutions across our digital platforms.

You will design and maintain robust automation frameworks, mentor teammates, and collaborate with cross-functional squads to ensure high-quality software delivery in an Agile environment.

Qualifications

• Solid understanding of quality engineering principles and BDD/Gherkin.
• Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks using Playwright and Vitest.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Developers, Architects to translate requirements into test coverage.
• Mentor manual and automation testers to grow team capability.
• Drive improvements in automation effectiveness, reliability, and delivery performance.

Skills

Playwright

Vitest

BDD

Gherkin

CI/CD

Agile

Mentoring

Tools

Playwright

Vitest

Job description

Ready to help shape the quality of digital products that make a real difference to people's lives?

Want to build robust automation frameworks, influence testing strategy, and champion quality throughout the software development lifecycle?

Excited by the opportunity to combine hands-on automation expertise with technical leadership and mentoring within a collaborative Agile environment?

As our Senior Automation Test Engineer, you'll play a key role in driving quality across our digital platforms and services. Working closely with engineering, product, and business teams, you'll help shape our automation approach, develop scalable testing solutions, and ensure high-quality software is delivered with confidence.

Combining hands-on automation expertise with technical leadership, you'll support the evolution of our testing capability, champion best practices, and help embed quality throughout every stage of software delivery.

What will you be doing?

As a senior member of the quality engineering team, you'll help drive and support our automation strategy, ensuring automated testing remains a core part of our development process. You'll design, build, and maintain scalable automation frameworks using Playwright and Vitest, creating reliable and maintainable test solutions that support rapid, high-quality software delivery.

Working closely with Product Owners, Developers, Architects, and stakeholders, you'll develop automated test scenarios using BDD and Gherkin, helping to ensure business requirements are translated into effective and meaningful test coverage. You'll collaborate across Agile squads to support planning, refinement, estimation, and delivery activities, ensuring quality remains at the forefront of every release.

Alongside your technical responsibilities, you'll provide mentoring and guidance to both manual and automation testers, helping to grow capability across the team. You'll promote a culture of quality, ownership, and continuous improvement while supporting onboarding activities and sharing knowledge across the wider engineering community.

You'll also contribute to operational excellence by supporting root cause analysis, identifying opportunities for improvement, maintaining clear documentation, and helping to drive improvements in application reliability, automation effectiveness, and delivery performance.

You will bring

You'll bring a solid understanding of quality engineering principles, behavioural-driven development, and Gherkin-based testing approaches. Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines and working within Agile delivery environments will enable you to effectively support modern software delivery practices.

You'll be a confident communicator who can work collaboratively with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike. Whether you're helping define testing approaches, investigating defects, mentoring colleagues, or improving automation coverage, you'll be passionate about delivering high standards and driving continuous improvement.

Most importantly, you'll bring a proactive mindset, strong analytical skills, and a commitment to helping teams deliver exceptional digital experiences through quality-first engineering.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

Equality, diversity, and inclusion are incredibly important to us; we have a culture of belonging. We're always looking to increase the diversity of our workforce to ensure we can provide the best service possible for everyone. It's not just about the professional experience you bring - we're interested in who you are and your potential. If there's an adjustment to our recruitment process that would help you to be your best, speak to our team and they'll be happy to help.

Senior Automation Engineer Leeds, England, GB