Senior QA Engineer

Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd; Greater London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading UK supermarket is seeking a technical leader for a quality assurance role at their London Store Support Centre. This position involves driving accountability for quality across teams, setting standards, and mentoring engineers. Applicants should have strong experience in quality assurance, knowledge of automation frameworks, and excellent communication skills. The company offers comprehensive benefits, including colleague discounts, a pension scheme, and performance-related bonuses, along with a commitment to work-life balance.

Benefits

Colleague discounts

Performance-related bonus

Private healthcare

Employee Assistance Programme

Annual holiday allowance

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading QA teams and mentoring junior engineers.
• Strong knowledge of test strategy, planning, and execution across various testing types.
• Expertise in automation frameworks and scripting.

Responsibilities

• Drive accountability for quality across multiple teams.
• Act as the decision-maker for release readiness.
• Define and maintain testing standards and quality benchmarks.
• Collaborate beyond the squad to align quality goals.
• Provide direction and mentorship to QA engineers.

Skills

Leading QA teams

Test strategy knowledge

Automation frameworks

Software design understanding

CI/CD pipelines experience

Defect analysis and management

Excellent communication skills

Collaboration skills

Continuous improvement commitment

Tools

Selenium

Cypress

Playwright

Jira

Confluence

Job description

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 10 December 2025
Requisition ID: 400041433

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you’ll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We’ve made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.

Joining our team at Sainsbury's means being a part of an exceptionally dynamic and multi-faceted organisation that serves millions of customers daily. With the UK’s largest loyalty scheme and cutting-edge digital platforms, we handle an astonishing 1.2 billion transactions each year, offering a vast and intricate dataset that few can match. Accelerating retail media capabilities is a top priority for the Nectar and Media Agency business unit, with a focus on building a market‑leading offering both onsite and offsite. This includes scaling agency partnerships and digitising in‑store media through digital screens. Initiatives like Sainsbury’s Insights Platform (SIP) are unlocking new revenue streams by providing suppliers with valuable operational data and actionable insights, positioning Media Agency at the forefront of retail media and data innovation.

We use a variety of tech here and you need to be willing to pick up new tools and techniques. We’d also like you to be yourself — analytical, curious and unafraid to challenge the status quo. You’ll be a role model for best practices, championing a customer centric mindset and a passion for finding creative ways to solve problems, mentoring fellow engineers as a progressive member of the engineering community.

More about the role

Top Responsibilities:

Quality Ownership Beyond Squad Level

Drive accountability for quality across multiple teams, ensuring standards are upheld and outcomes align with business priorities.

Own the Quality Gate

Act as the decision‑maker for release readiness (go/no‑go), balancing risk and business impact.

Set Standards and Best Practices

Define and maintain testing standards, automation strategies, and quality benchmarks for the squad and wider teams.

Influence and Leadership

Lead practices like 3‑Amigos, refinement sessions, and quality‑focused ceremonies. Push back constructively when needed to protect quality.

Operate Across Teams

Collaborate beyond the squad to align quality goals with product, engineering, and business stakeholders.

Strategic Guidance Over Day‑to‑Day Execution

Provide direction and mentorship to QA engineers, focusing on guidance and influence rather than granular operational tasks.

Champion process optimisation, automation adoption, and innovation to improve efficiency and quality.

Defect Management and Risk Analysis

Ensure robust defect classification, prioritisation, and root cause analysis to prevent leakage and improve user experience.

Communication and Reporting

Deliver clear, actionable insights on quality status, risks, and readiness to stakeholders.

Leadership Within the Squad

Balance hands‑on involvement with strategic oversight, ensuring the squad meets quality objectives while contributing to cross‑team initiatives.

More about you

You are a technical leader and influencer, passionate about quality and collaboration. You thrive in a fast‑paced environment, balancing strategic impact with practical squad‑level engagement.

Essential skills:

• Proven experience leading QA teams and mentoring junior engineers.
• Strong knowledge of test strategy, planning, and execution across functional, regression, integration, and performance testing.
• Expertise in automation frameworks and scripting (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Playwright or similar).
• Solid understanding of software design, architecture, and best engineering practices.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, cloud platforms, and infrastructure as code.
• Ability to analyse and classify defects, manage defect leakage, and drive root cause analysis.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical information to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Strong collaboration skills, working effectively with cross‑functional teams.
• Commitment to continuous improvement, process optimisation, and adoption of new tools and practices.
• High level of accountability, ownership, and a customer‑centric mindset.
• Experience with Jira & Confluence for ticket/documentation support.
• Good practical knowledge of frontend and backend tech stacks.
• Experience of mentoring more junior QA / test engineer colleagues

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working.

Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury’s, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance‑related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest‑free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).