Senior Software Quality Engineer (Automation, Performance & Resilience)

Vestir Sourcing Ltd; Coventry; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A technology sourcing company in the UK is seeking a Senior Software Quality Engineer to lead test strategy for backend services. You will develop automation frameworks, perform performance testing, and ensure operational readiness across AWS/Azure environments. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of experience with strong skills in Java, CI/CD, and testing frameworks. This role offers a dynamic environment with significant impact on product quality.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Quality Engineering/SDET roles focused on backend or platform services.
• Strong coding with Java and hands-on automation using Cucumber and/or Robot Framework.
• Proven experience building CI/CD-integrated test frameworks (Git/GitHub, Gradle, Docker).
• Performance testing expertise with Gatling.
• Chaos and resilience testing experience (Litmus) and operational readiness validation.

Responsibilities

• Own test strategy, planning, and estimation for services and programs.
• Design and maintain unified automation frameworks (Java, Cucumber, Robot Framework).
• Perform load/stress/soak tests with Gatling.
• Run chaos tests with Litmus; validate failure handling.
• Integrate tests into pipelines (Git/GitHub); enforce quality gates.

Skills

Java

CI/CD integration

Performance testing

Automation with Cucumber

Observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana)

Cloud experience (AWS/Azure)

Chaos testing

API testing (Postman)

Tools

Postman

Docker

Git/GitHub

Gradle

Gatling

Litmus

Robot Framework

New Relic

Job description

About the role

We’re looking for a Senior Software Quality Engineer to own test strategy end-to-end for backend services. You’ll build scalable automation and performance frameworks, integrate them into CI/CD, and validate resiliency and operational readiness across AWS/Azure environments. You’ll partner closely with engineering, SRE, and product to enable fast, reliable releases.

Key responsibilities

Strategy and planning

• Own test strategy, planning, and estimation for services and programs
• Define quality gates, risk-based coverage, and release-readiness criteria

Automation and quality engineering

• Design and maintain unified automation frameworks (Java, Cucumber, Robot Framework)
• Build API and integration tests (Postman), reduce flakiness, and improve maintainability
• Standardize builds (Gradle) and containerize test tooling (Docker)

Performance engineering

• Design, execute, and analyze load/stress/soak tests with Gatling
• Model realistic workloads, establish SLOs, and provide tuning recommendations
• Track throughput, latency (P95/P99), error budgets, and capacity signals

Resilience and operational readiness

• Run chaos tests with Litmus; validate failure handling, timeouts, and fallbacks
• Verify backup/restore and disaster recovery objectives (RTO/RPO)
• Lead game-days and resilience drills; document runbooks and playbooks

Observability and feedback loops

• Instrument and monitor with Prometheus, Grafana, and New Relic
• Wire test results and service telemetry into dashboards and alerts
• Enable data-driven go/no-go decisions with objective quality signals

CI/CD and DevOps integration

• Integrate tests into pipelines (Git/GitHub), enforce quality gates, and parallelize execution
• Support trunk-based development, shift-left checks, and stable environments

Collaboration and enablement

• Partner with developers, SRE, and product to triage, root-cause, and prevent defects
• Mentor engineers on testing best practices and reliability-first design
• Contribute to documentation, standards, and continuous improvement

What we expect from the candidate (must-haves)

• 10+ years in Quality Engineering/SDET roles focused on backend or platform services
• Strong coding with Java and hands-on automation using Cucumber and/or Robot Framework
• Proven experience building CI/CD-integrated test frameworks (Git/GitHub, Gradle, Docker)
• Performance testing expertise with Gatling (workload design, analysis, recommendations)
• Chaos and resilience testing experience (Litmus) and operational readiness validation
• Observability: Prometheus/Grafana/New Relic for metrics, dashboards, SLOs, and alerting
• API testing experience (Postman), strong understanding of REST and common integration patterns
• Cloud experience with AWS and/or Azure
• Solid grasp of testing strategy: functional, integration, system, and non-functional
• Excellent communication, critical thinking, and cross-functional collaboration

Nice to have

• Hercules or similar performance harness tooling
• Experience with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins (pipelines and environments)
• Contract testing, service virtualization, or test containers
• Kubernetes familiarity (Litmus typically runs on K8s), IaC basics (e.g., Terraform)
• Domain knowledge in banking/fintech, compliance-minded testing

Success metrics you’ll influence

• Reduced test cycle time and flakiness rate; improved pipeline pass rate
• Meaningful automation coverage aligned to business risk
• Measurable improvements in P95/P99 latency and error budgets
• Fewer escaped defects and faster MTTD/MTTR via actionable telemetry
• Consistent, auditable release-readiness signals

First 90 days

• 0–30: Onboard, baseline current coverage and performance; ship quick wins in CI gating
• 31–60: Deliver Gatling suites and dashboards (Prometheus/Grafana/New Relic); standardize framework patterns
• 61–90: Run first chaos game-day; validate backup/restore; publish reliability playbooks; measure impact

Tech stack you’ll use

• Languages/Frameworks: Java, Cucumber, Robot Framework
• Performance/Resilience: Gatling, Litmus, Hercules (nice to have)
• API/Tools: Postman, Git/GitHub, Gradle, Docker
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic
• Cloud: AWS, Azure