Test Planning Lead - Mainframe Migration (Hybrid)

NTT DATA, Inc.; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits package

Job summary

NTT DATA Services in London is seeking a Test Planning Lead for a mainframe product migration project. You will own end-to-end test planning, define the test strategy and master plan, and lead schedule governance across SIT, UAT, performance, and cutover activities in a hybrid UK role.

You will coordinate data and environment readiness, drive risk-based testing, and ensure audit-ready artefacts while aligning with vendors and business stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Proven test planning leadership on mainframe migrations (z/OS, COBOL, CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, Batch/JCL).
• Strong understanding of batch cycles, end-of-day processing, data migration and operational constraints.
• Track record creating risk-based test approaches and governance at programme scale.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the overall test strategy and master test plan (phases, entry/exit criteria, environments, data, tooling, defect management, reporting).
• Build and manage an integrated test schedule aligned to milestones, cutover and release plans.
• Lead risk-based test planning with clear traceability to requirements and migration risks.
• Coordinate test phases: SIT, System/Integration, Regression, UAT support, Performance/Volume, Resilience/DR, Security, dress rehearsals/cutover.
• Define and govern test data approach (masked production-like data, synthetic data, data refresh cycles, reconciliation needs).
• Plan and coordinate environment readiness (mainframe regions/LPARs, middleware, interfaces, batch windows, stubs/simulators).
• Establish defect triage cadence, severity model, and quality gates; ensure timely resolution and retest.
• Drive stakeholder alignment across dev, infrastructure, ops, SMEs, and third parties; chair test planning forums.

Skills

Test planning

Mainframe migrations

Risk-based testing

Stakeholder management

JIRA

Zephyr

ServiceNow

Confluence

Excel

Executive reporting

Tools

JIRA

Zephyr

ServiceNow

Confluence

Excel

LRE

TDM

SV

Job description

NTT DATA Services in London is seeking a Test Planning Lead for a mainframe product migration project. You will own end-to-end test planning, define the test strategy and master plan, and lead schedule governance across SIT, UAT, performance, and cutover activities in a hybrid UK role.

You will coordinate data and environment readiness, drive risk-based testing, and ensure audit-ready artefacts while aligning with vendors and business stakeholders.