Test Lead

Cognizant; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking a QA Lead within its Quality Engineering & Assurance practice in the Greater London area. The role focuses on leading end-to-end testing, test planning, estimation, design, execution and defect management across client projects.

You will collaborate with clients, business analysts, developers and project managers to ensure quality deliverables, drive automation initiatives and maintain testing standards. Mentoring and coaching of team members is also expected.

Qualifications

• Must lead end-to-end testing efforts across multiple projects.
• Strong ability to analyze requirements and define traceable test plans.
• Experience in designing test strategies and risk-based testing.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end testing activities including requirement analysis, test planning, estimation, test design, execution, and defect management.
• Collaborate with clients, business analysts, developers, and project managers to ensure quality deliverables and successful project execution.
• Manage knowledge transition, resource planning, test environments, test data, and release coordination.
• Drive process improvements, automation initiatives, quality compliance, audits, and metrics reporting.
• Support UAT, defect prevention, root cause analysis, and retrospectives for continuous improvement.
• Mentor team members, conduct performance coaching, identify training needs, and support overall team development.

Skills

Test planning

Requirement analysis

Test design

Defect management

Mentoring

Performance coaching

Tools

Selenium

UFT

Java

Cucumber/SpecFlow

BDD frameworks

Job description

Role will be part of our Quality Engineering & Assurance (QE&A) Practice. With more than 650 clients across industry verticals and a global footprint, Cognizant QE&A practice is a recognized thought leader in quality engineer and Assurance .As enterprises simplify, modernize and secure their legacy environments for the digital era, robust quality Engineering and assurance is essential. Quality takes an end-to-end connotation and must straddle both legacy and digital systems. Cognizant QE&A is reimagining QE&A, employing an end-to-end ecosystem approach with intelligent and automated QA processes. In so doing, increasing quality and speed to promote faster business and technology change, as well as a better customer experience.

Role Summary:

• Lead end-to-end testing activities, including requirement analysis, test planning, estimation, test design, execution, and defect management.
• Collaborate with clients, business analysts, developers, and project managers to ensure quality deliverables and successful project execution.
• Manage knowledge transition, resource planning, test environments, test data, and release coordination.
• Drive process improvements, automation initiatives, quality compliance, audits, and metrics reporting.
• Support UAT, defect prevention, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement through retrospectives and lessons learned.
• Mentor team members, conduct performance coaching, identify training needs, and support overall team development.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead test proposals by analysing requirements, effort estimation, resourcing needs, and recommending suitable testing tools.
• Manage knowledge transition activities, including KT planning, client coordination, documentation, and team training.
• Perform requirement analysis, create traceability matrices, identify gaps, and ensure completeness of test requirements.
• Develop test strategies, test plans, estimations, schedules, resource plans, and risk management approaches.
• Oversee test design, test data preparation, test execution, defect management, UAT support, and environment readiness.
• Coordinate release management activities, monitor project progress, and provide regular status updates to stakeholders.
• Drive process improvements, automation initiatives, knowledge management, and adoption of best practices.
• Ensure that team maintain manual and automated test cases using Selenium, UFT, Java, Cucumber/SpecFlow, and BDD frameworks.
• Ensure compliance with quality standards, audits, testing processes, and organizational guidelines.
• Prepare and analyse project metrics, SLAs, defect trends, and risk reports for management and clients.
• Conduct root cause analysis, retrospectives, test closure activities, and support go/no-go decisions.
• Mentor team members through performance management, coaching, training, conflict resolution, and leadership development.