Senior QA Engineer | Distributed Systems |TypeScript | Energy and Commodities Trading | £100,000

VirtueTech Recruitment Group; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

VirtueTech Recruitment Group in London is seeking a Senior QA Engineer to own automation strategy in a fast-paced energy trading environment. You will build and maintain automation frameworks, focusing on reliability of distributed systems and Kafka-driven services.

The role demands TypeScript/Playwright expertise, strong manual, automated, and performance testing skills, and the ability to push quality left across Agile teams with cross‑functional partners.

Qualifications

• Proven experience using Playwright and TypeScript for automation testing.
• Strong understanding of manual, automated, and performance testing principles.
• Ability to build automation frameworks and POCs from scratch.
• Experience testing distributed systems, APIs, or event-driven architectures, including exposure to Kafka would be highly advantageous.
• Confident communicator who can challenge developers and promote quality-first practices.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain automation frameworks using Playwright with TypeScript.
• Design and deliver POCs to validate and enhance testing tools and practices.
• Drive a Shift Left approach, embedding testing early in the development lifecycle.
• Lead improvements in regression and performance testing coverage across applications and distributed systems.
• Collaborate with developers, analysts, and stakeholders in an Agile / Kanban environment.
• Contribute to overall QA strategy, helping to define best practices and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Support the testing of event-driven architectures and integrations leveraging Kafka.

Skills

Playwright

TypeScript

Automation testing

Shift Left

Performance testing

Distributed systems testing

Agile / Kanban

Tools

Playwright

Kafka

Job description

Senior QA Engineer | Distributed Systems |TypeScript | Energy and Commodities Trading | £100,000

This organisation is a leading international energy trading business, specialising in the trading and optimisation of Oil, Natural Gas, Power, and LNG across global markets. Its technology function is responsible for developing and supporting the platforms, applications, infrastructure, and distributed systems that enable front-to-back trading operations, ensuring systems are secure, resilient, and capable of supporting high-volume, real-time trading activity. This includes supporting event-driven architectures and technologies such as Kafka that underpin business‑critical data flows across the organisation.

Within this environment, a QA Engineer plays a key role in maintaining the quality of software releases by working closely with Product, Development, and Business teams to identify defects, and ensure critical trading applications and distributed systems perform reliably. Acting as a key quality gate throughout the software delivery lifecycle, you will help minimise operational risk, improve system stability, and ensure technology solutions meet the high standards required within a fast‑paced, business‑critical energy trading environment.

As a Senior QA Engineer, you will take ownership of building proof‑of‑concepts (POCs), developing automation frameworks from scratch, and introducing a Shift Left mindset across teams. It’s a hands‑on position where you’ll shape the QA function and play a key part in improving quality and delivery across the business, with exposure to testing Kafka‑based integrations and complex distributed systems.

Location: London (Hybrid – 3 days onsite)

2 - 3 days a week in London Victoria

Key Responsibilities for the QA Engineer:

• Build and maintain automation frameworks using Playwright with TypeScript
• Design and deliver POCs to validate and enhance testing tools and practices
• Drive a Shift Left approach, embedding testing early in the development lifecycle
• Lead improvements in regression and performance testing coverage across applications, distributed systems, and Kafka‑driven services
• Collaborate with developers, analysts, and stakeholders in an Agile / Kanban environment
• Contribute to overall QA strategy, helping to define best practices and continuous improvement initiatives
• Support the testing of event‑driven architectures and integrations leveraging Kafka

What We’re Looking For:

• Proven experience using Playwright and TypeScript for automation testing
• Strong understanding of manual, automated, and performance testing principles
• Ability to build automation frameworks and POCs from scratch
• Experience testing distributed systems, APIs, or event‑driven architectures, including exposure to technologies such as Kafka, would be highly advantageous
• Confident communicator who can challenge developers and promote quality‑first practices
• A proactive mindset with a focus on Shift Left and continuous improvement
• Previous experience in financial services or trading environments preferred

This is a great opportunity for a Senior QA Engineer to take real ownership, influence testing strategy, and help shape how automation and quality are delivered across a global financial organisation, working on modern platforms that leverage distributed systems and Kafka to support real‑time trading operations.

Senior QA Engineer | Distributed Systems |TypeScript | Energy and Commodities Trading | £100,000