Senior Test Engineer

UK-Research-and-Innovation-; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 54,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Defined benefit pension

30 days annual leave

Employee discounts

Employee assistance programme

Flexible working options

Job summary

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is seeking a Senior Test Engineer in Bristol for a fixed-term 23-month contract. The role is hybrid (minimum 2 days in the office) with a salary of £46,743 per annum.

You will design, develop, and maintain automated test solutions, build reusable frameworks, and ensure tests are integrated into CI/CD. You will mentor testers, promote modern practices, and help manage quality risks across teams.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in software testing and quality engineering within Agile delivery environments.
• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining automated test frameworks using modern automation tools.
• Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience applying risk-based testing methodologies and strategies.
• Experience coaching testers and contributing to testing communities.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, maintain automated test solutions across multiple products and services.
• Develop reusable test frameworks, tooling, and assets for efficient testing.
• Ensure automated tests are integrated into CI/CD pipelines and support QA activities.
• Apply risk-based testing to identify quality risks and communicate them clearly.
• Analyze requirements and specifications to define effective test coverage.
• Design functional, integration, system, regression, and non-functional tests.
• Collaborate with developers, analysts, product managers, and partners to embed quality.
• Investigate defects and communicate findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Promote modern testing practices and contribute to quality metrics.
• Contribute to testing standards and evaluate new testing tools and approaches.
• Coach and mentor other testers to improve testing capability.

Skills

Software testing

Quality engineering

Agile delivery

Test automation

CI/CD integration

Mentoring

Test automation tooling

Tools

Robot Framework

Selenium

Playwright

Cypress

Job description

UKRI
Salary: £46,743 per annum.
Band: UKRI Band E.
Contract Type: Fixed Term (23 months).
Hours: Full-time (flexible working available).
Location: Bristol - Hybrid working available (Minimum 2 days per week in office).

Closing Date: Thursday 1st October 2026.

About the role

As a Senior Test Engineer, you will:

• Design, develop, maintain, and implement automated test solutions across multiple products and services.
• Develop and maintain reusable test frameworks, tooling, and test assets that support efficient and consistent testing practices.
• Ensure automated tests are integrated into CI/CD pipelines and support continuous quality assurance activities.
• Apply a risk-based approach to testing and proactively identify, assess, communicate, and manage quality risks.
• Analyse requirements, user stories, designs, technical specifications, and business processes to define effective test approaches and coverage.
• Design and implement functional, integration, system, exploratory, regression, performance, and non-functional testing activities.
• Collaborate closely with developers, business analysts, product managers, and partners to ensure quality is embedded from the outset.
• Investigate defects and quality issues, ensuring that findings are clearly communicated and understood by both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Promote modern engineering and testing practices across teams and projects.
• Contribute to the development of testing standards, strategies, frameworks, and quality metrics.
• Support the evaluation and adoption of new testing tools, technologies, and approaches.
• Coach, mentor, and support other testers and team members to improve testing capability and quality outcomes.

Personal Specification

The below criteria will be scored during Shortlisting (S), Interview (I) or both (S&I).

Essential

• Proven experience in software testing and quality engineering within Agile delivery environments and working with multidisciplinary teams (S).
• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining automated test frameworks using modern automation tools such as Robot Framework, Selenium, Playwright or Cypress (S&I).
• Experience integrating automated testing into CI/CD pipelines (S&I).
• Experience applying risk-based testing methodologies and test strategies (I).
• Experience coaching and mentoring testers and quality engineering professionals as well as contributing to testing communities of practice and continuous improvement initiatives (S&I).

Benefits

We recognise and value our employees as individuals and aim to provide a favourable pay and rewards package. UKRI are committed to supporting employees' development and promote a culture of continuous learning!

A list of benefits below:

• An outstanding defined benefit pension scheme
• 30 days' annual leave in addition to 10.5 public and privilege days (full time equivalent)
• Employee discounts and offers on retail and leisure activities
• Employee assistance programme, providing confidential help and advice
• Flexible working options

Plus many more benefits and wellbeing initiatives that enable our employees to have a great work life balance!

For further information on our benefits please see: Benefits of working at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

Please note, if you will require sponsorship to work in the UK, as part of your sponsorship application, you and any dependants travelling with you, will be required to pay costs directly to The Home Office for the application before you start your role with us. UKRI is normally able to reimburse some, or all of these fees after you have become an employee and this can be discussed with the Hiring Manager. For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/how-much-it-costs or contact [e-mail].