Software Development Engineer

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency; Nottingham; On-site; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Civil Service Pension

25 days annual leave + bank holidays

Flexible working

Job summary

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) Nottingham is seeking a Test Engineering specialist to design and develop test frameworks, and build automated checks for APIs, integrations, and end-to-end scenarios. You will help strengthen CI/CD validation and foster best practices across the team.

You will collaborate with developers, testers, analysts, and DevOps engineers to embed quality early and support reliable live services with a culture of continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Lead the design and development of test frameworks and tools.
• Strong experience building automated checks across API, integration, contract and end-to-end levels.
• Proven ability to improve CI/CD pipeline confidence through automated validation.

Responsibilities

• Leading the design and development of test frameworks and tools.
• Building reliable automated checks across API, integration, contract and end-to-end levels.
• Improving CI/CD pipeline confidence through effective automated validation.
• Investigating complex failures across code, environments, data and pipelines.
• Supporting live service reliability by identifying risks and driving improvements.
• Mentoring colleagues and promoting consistent quality engineering practices.
• Contributing to engineering standards, continuous improvement and cross-team collaboration.

Skills

Test automation

CI/CD

Programming (Python/Java)

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Selenium

Postman

Jenkins

Job description

The Strategy, Policy, Digital & Technology Directorate plays a central role in delivering DVSA's digital services that support road safety and compliance across the UK. The Test Engineering team sits within this directorate and is responsible for ensuring high-quality, reliable, and scalable digital products. Working closely with product, delivery, and engineering teams, the group embeds quality from the outset of development, balancing manual and automated testing to provide confidence in delivery. The team drives improvements in testing practices, builds reusable frameworks, and promotes a culture of collaboration, early engagement, and continuous improvement to meet both user needs and DVSA's strategic goals.

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays a privilege day for the King's birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below! Find out more about what it's like working at Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency - Department for Transport Careers. Your responsibilities will include, but aren't limited to:

• Leading the design and development of test frameworks and tools.
• Building reliable automated checks across API, integration, contract and end-to-end levels.
• Improving CI/CD pipeline confidence through effective automated validation.
• Investigating complex failures across code, environments, data and pipelines.
• Supporting live service reliability by identifying risks and driving improvements.
• Working with developers, testers, analysts and DevOps engineers to embed quality early.
• Mentoring colleagues and promoting consistent quality engineering practices.
• Contributing to engineering standards, continuous improvement and cross-team collaboration.

Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public. For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.