Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Adaptive; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Adaptive is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test to join our London team and help build robust front-office platforms.

You will define and implement automated tests across the full stack, from unit to system, while applying TDD/BDD and collaborating in an Agile environment. The role focuses on performance profiling, telemetry, and CI/CD integration to improve quality and reliability.

Qualifications

• Proficient in Java with focus on automated testing.
• Strong understanding of QA methodologies, shift-left and SDLC.
• Experience across unit to E2E test stacks and edge-case discovery.
• Ability to translate feature specs into test coverage and plans.
• Experience integrating tests with CI/CD pipelines.

Skills

Java

QA methodologies

TDD/BDD

CI/CD

Exploratory testing

Test automation

Profiling

Telemetry & dashboards

Chaos testing

Static analysis

Job description

WE ARE

At Adaptive, we are a financial consulting firm that partners with capital, commodity, and digital market participants. We value differentiation through technology. Our experienced teams design and deliver complex front-office technology solutions using our proven accelerators to create long-term competitive advantage.

WE ARE

At Adaptive, we are a financial consulting firm that partners with capital, commodity, and digital market participants. We value differentiation through technology. Our experienced teams design and deliver complex front-office technology solutions using our proven accelerators to create long-term competitive advantage.

Our clients include the world's leading investment banks, investment managers, fintech and capital market service providers. With a global reach with offices in London, New York, Barcelona and Montreal, we have a proven track record of delivering powerful, elegant and intuitive trading technology solutions.

We are looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test to join our team and help develop our open-source and proprietary platform products.

YOU ARE

• Self-directed, with the ability to define and manage priorities independently
• A great team player who loves sharing knowledge and learning from others
• A problem solver with strong analytical skills
• Excited about learning new things and keeping up to date
• Happy to work in a test-driven and Agile development fashion

YOU HAVE

• Strong understanding of QA methodologies, shift-left practices, and the full software development lifecycle (TDD, BDD, Scrum, Kanban)
• Proficient in Java, with a focus on automated testing, root cause analysis, and debugging
• Comfortable implementing tests across the full test stack: unit, component, integration, system, and E2E
• Experience in uncovering complex edge cases through exploratory testing
• Confident in translating feature specifications into appropriate test coverage and test plans
• Working knowledge of BDD practices, including story refinement, example mapping, acceptance criteria definition, and 3 Amigos
• Comfortable using existing code and tests to understand system behaviour
• Practical knowledge of application profiling to identify performance and memory bottlenecks
• Familiar with defining quality metrics, telemetry, and reporting dashboards
• Hands-on exposure to chaos testing to validate system fault tolerance and reliability
• Experienced in integrating test runs and static code analysis tools into CI/CD pipelines
• Working knowledge of maintaining CI/CD pipeline health, with a focus on minimizing false positives and maintaining