Test Manager

Technopride Ltd; City Of London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology firm in the UK seeks an experienced Test Manager to oversee the end-to-end testing strategy for transformation programmes in General Insurance. The role requires strong expertise in automation (especially with Playwright) and leadership capabilities across distributed teams. Ideal candidates should have a solid background in insurance testing and stakeholder management, along with a degree in a relevant field. Competitive salary and opportunities for growth included.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in General Insurance testing.
• Strong hands-on expertise with Playwright for web UI automation.
• Experience leading large-scale transformation programmes.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the end-to-end test strategy for upgrades.
• Lead test planning, estimation, and scheduling across teams.
• Implement a risk-based testing approach.

Skills

General Insurance domain expertise

Test strategy development

Automation with Playwright

Risk-based testing

Stakeholder management

Education

Degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

JIRA

Playwright

Postman

JMeter

CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, Azure DevOps)

Job description

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Test Manager with strong General Insurance domain expertise and a proven track record of leading large-scale transformation programmes—specifically Duck Creek or Guidewire platform upgrades. The role is responsible for defining and delivering the end-to-end test strategy across multiple streams (functional, regression, integration, UAT, and non‑functional). The ideal candidate brings a test engineering mindset, promotes shift‑left practices, drives automation adoption (including Playwright), and enhances quality through continuous testing and robust test governance.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own the end-to-end test strategy for Duck Creek or Guidewire upgrade programmes, aligned with programme timelines, release plans, and business objectives.
• Lead test planning, estimation, and scheduling across distributed teams and workstreams to ensure timely delivery.
• Implement a risk‑based testing approach; maintain a dynamic test risk register and ensure timely mitigation.
• Design and implement the automation strategy across UI and API layers, including frameworks, CI/CD integration, and reusable assets.
• Lead the adoption and implementation of Playwright for modern web UI automation, ensuring best practices around reliability, parallel execution, cross‑browser coverage, and pipeline integration.
• Define non‑functional testing (NFT) strategy spanning performance, load, scalability, security, and accessibility testing, collaborating with platform and infrastructure teams.
• Establish a robust Test Data Management (TDM) strategy including data profiling, synthetic data creation, masking, subsetting, and environment refresh cycles.
• Drive test environment strategy, including provisioning, configuration management, and use of service virtualization or mocks for dependency testing.
• Promote a Test Engineering culture through shift‑left testing, testability by design, contract testing, and continuous feedback loops.
• Manage stakeholders across business functions, product ownership, architecture, infrastructure, vendor partners, and third‑party suppliers.
• Coordinate and govern vendor/supplier testing activities, validating deliverables such as patches, fixes, and acceptance testing artifacts.
• Oversee the defect management lifecycle, ensuring effective triage, prioritization, and resolution; establish and enforce quality gates.
• Provide detailed reporting on quality metrics, coverage, defects, automation ROI, risks, and readiness to senior stakeholders and governance forums.
• Build and mentor high‑performing test teams, including test leads, automation engineers, performance specialists, and TDM experts.
• Lead regression and upgrade‑specific testing activities, including baseline regression packs, compatibility testing, data migration validation, cutover rehearsals, and post‑go‑live verification.

Required Technical & Domain Skills

• Extensive experience in General Insurance testing with functional understanding of policy, billing, claims, rating, and endorsement processes.
• Demonstrated delivery experience on Duck Creek or Guidewire upgrade programmes (major version upgrades, LOB migrations, patch upgrades).
• Strong hands‑on expertise with Playwright for web UI automation: designing scripts, debugging, parallelisation, flakiness reduction, and CI integration.
• Solid grounding in UI and API automation frameworks with experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, etc.).
• Experience with API testing tools (Postman, REST‑assured, or equivalent) and service virtualization techniques.
• Test Data Management experience including masking, synthetic data creation, subsetting, and TDM tooling.
• Non‑functional testing experience with performance/load testing tools (JMeter, LoadRunner, etc.) and general security testing awareness.
• Familiarity with test management and defect tracking tools (e.g., JIRA) and modern reporting and orchestration tools.
• Knowledge of cloud environments, containerisation, and infrastructure‑as‑code concepts impacting test environments.

Leadership & Programme Experience

• Experience leading testing within large‑scale transformation programmes involving multi‑vendor ecosystems and geographically distributed teams.
• Strong stakeholder management with the ability to communicate effectively with senior leadership and steering committees.
• Proven capability to scale testing operations, implement best practices, and transform legacy QA approaches into engineering‑led continuous testing models.

Desired Certifications & Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
• Relevant certifications such as ISTQB Advanced/Expert, Agile testing certifications, ScrumMaster/Kanban certifications, or Duck Creek/Guidewire certifications (if available).
• Playwright training or proven experience in implementing Playwright at scale is highly desirable.

Success Criteria & KPIs

• Reduced production defects associated with upgraded components and integrations.
• Increased automation coverage across critical business and technical flows, demonstrating tangible automation ROI.
• On‑time completion of regression cycles and successful cutover rehearsals with minimal defects or rollbacks.
• Effective mitigation of testing risks and timely stakeholder sign‑off for releases.
• Improved feedback loops through CI‑driven continuous validation and quality gates.

Typical Deliverables

• Comprehensive test strategy and test plan.
• Automation strategy and Playwright framework implementation.
• Non‑functional testing (NFT) strategy and TDM strategy documentation.
• Test schedules, estimates, resource plans, and traceability matrices.
• Test cases, automated test suites, and environment/data preparation scripts.
• Regular dashboards and reports on test progress, risks, defects, and quality.

Personal Attributes

• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills with an engineering‑first mindset.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate technical risks in business terms.
• Collaborative and influential leadership style across cross‑functional and vendor teams.
• Resilient, adaptable, and able to thrive in high‑pressure transformation environments.